Floating solar panels have been in the limelight for the past few years, with a recent news analysis from Smithsonian wondering if these will represent a large part of the future renewable energy sector. What are floating solar panels? These refer to solar panels that are installed on water bodies – reservoirs, lakes, irrigation canals… Now, why would someone want […]
Here’s a news item about a hospital in India installing a large solar concentrator that helps in generating steam to cook 2000 meals a day and also sterilize hospital equipment. What is a solar concentrator? Solar concentrators, also called solar thermal concentrators or concentrating solar thermal, represent a technology that uses the concentration of sunlight to produce a temperature much […]
China has so far dominated the production of solar panels, but with the importance of solar power plant being recognized all over the world, prominent countries are hastening to ensure that they have a robust domestic solar cell and panel manufacturing ecosystem. Here is a news item about a research study in the context of “reshoring” solar panel manufacturing to […]
Here’s a news item about scientists in Belgium announcing the development of bifacial perovskite solar panel being introduced. Hold on. What is a perovskite solar panel? And what are bifacial solar panels? We will answer the latter one first. Solar panels – until recently – had solar cells arranged only on one side of the panel with the backside covered […]
Here’s some news about a lovely solar lamp being brought to the market by Ikea in partnership with Little Sun. What such an interesting product shows is the exciting applications to which solar power can be put use to. This is something that is quite unique to solar, amongst all renewable energy sources. Because of its modularity, solar panels can […]
India has been going big on solar last few years and is now reportedly setting up mega solar parks. Now, what exactly is a solar park? Is it just a place where solar panels are “parked”? Solar parks are more than that. Solar parks typically refer to a large scale infrastructure set up by a public or private organization in […]
Solar panels need to be in the hot sun to be in business. High sunshine – especially in tropical regions – might mean a lot of electricity generated, but this in most cases also implies that the panels can get quite hot. Will high temperatures affect the output of the solar panels? They sure will. Solar panels generate at their […]
Not everyone of you would have heard about John Goodenough, though we feel he deserves to be far more familiar than he is. Goodenough is one of the key scientists credited with the invention and development of the Li-ion battery. Goodenough received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1943 and his master’s and Ph.D. in physics from […]
It is generally accepted that most coal that we used today were formed from plant materials. If that were so, can we make coal from the hundreds of millions of tons of agricultural waste available worldwide? Yes. It is possible to convert biomass into a material very similar to coal through a process called torrefaction. Torrefaction refers to the slow […]
No, we are not kidding. Geothermal energy is heat energy from the earth’s crust. Some regions of the world (think Iceland) are blessed with massive geothermal activity right under their surface. Such regions are ideal for setting up geothermal power that can use the hot water from under the earth to run a turbine and generate power. The interesting thing […]
