Renewable energy in India: Historical developments and prospects

Promoting renewable energy in India has assumed great importance in recent years in view of high growth rate of energy consumption, high share of coal in domestic energy demand, heavy dependence on imports for meeting demands for petroleum fuels and volatility of world oil market. A number of renewable energy technologies (RETs) are now well established in the country. The technology that has achieved the most dramatic growth rate and success is wind energy; India ranks fourth in the world in terms of total installed capacity. India hosts the world's largest small gasifier programme and second largest biogas programme. After many years of slow growth, demand for solar water heaters appears to be gaining momentum. Small hydro has been growing in India at a slow but steady pace. Installation of some of the technologies appears to have slowed down in recent years; these include improved cooking stoves (ICSs) and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. In spite of many successes, the overall growth of renewable energy in India has remained rather slow. A number of factors are likely to boost the future prospects of renewable energy in the country; these include global pressure and voluntary targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction, a possible future oil crisis, intensification of rural electrification program, and import of hydropower from neighbouring countries.     

Renewable energy in Oman: Status and future prospects

This paper attempts to review and discuss the status and future prospects of renewable energy in Oman. Renewable energy sources like solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass have been revised. The electricity shortages and the challenges to overcome the increase in electrical demands for the near future have been discussed. The investigations found that solar, shore-wind and geothermal could play an important role in the future of renewable energy in country. Also, it is found that there is need to investigate the potential of offshore-wind, biomass, and hydro (tide, wave and ocean thermal energy). The appearance and weight of renewable energy in the higher education programs and the Oman commitment toward renewable energy have been discussed. The paper finishes with some conclusions and recommendations.     

Renewable energy in a market-based economy: How to estimate its potential and choose the right incentives

A model to explain and predict market-driven investment in renewable energy capital is proposed. The model is suitable for application to the biomass, wind, solar and ocean-derived energy industries. It basically assumes that, given a set of prices and a specific technology, the marginal efficiency of capital invested in these industries only depends on the productivity of the project's site and on its energy transport distance. As suggested by traditional investment theory, the model supposes that only those projects offering marginal efficiencies of capital above the current available rate of interest would be implemented, thus demarcating a region in the productivity–energy transport distance space where all the economically viable projects should lie. By relating this region to the geographic space available for development, total potential investment can be deduced. By using cash flows defined in variable energy transport distance and mean wind speed, a case study for the Chilean wind energy industry is presented. The use of the model to analyse the effect of alternative support schemes for wind energy in Chile is briefly demonstrated. It is concluded that for increasing the area economically available for the development of new wind farms, a research and development support scheme aimed at reducing investment cost of wind turbines by 25% is equivalent to a 20% price subsidy on energy.     

Renewable energy in the South Pacific—options and constraints

Over the last fifteen years the small island nations in the South Pacific have seen the introduction of various forms of renewable energy technologies. In spite of high expectations from the development of indigenous renewable energy resources using nonconventional approaches (wind power, wave power, ocean thermal energy conversion, biogas digestors, biomass gasifiers), these technologies have largely failed to develop into viable alternatives to conventional approaches (based on imported petroleum, biomass and hydroelectric power). Among the few exceptions are solar photovoltaic power for remote islands, especially when provided through a utility type institution, solar water heaters, and the use of biomass wastes by agroindustries. As a result, all the island countries are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for their energy requirements. Some of them to such an extent that their petroleum imports are up to 500% of their total exports.As far as acceptance of new renewable energy technologies by the Pacific communities goes hasty decisions and introductions have done more harm than good.     

Renewable energy: Progressing towards a net zero energy island, the case of Reunion Island

For the last two decades, economic development in Reunion Island has led to major structural changes. The latter have been characterized by an increase in energy demand per person. This demand is mostly related to a high population growth (1.55% per year). Reunion currently has 833,000 inhabitants. The population will rise to 1 million in 2030. Like most ultraperipheral regions of the European Union, Reunion is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels for its energy production. The total primary energy consumption amounted to 1352 ktep in 2009 and 87.1% is imported energy. The development of various renewable energies such as solar energy, biomass, ocean energy, etc. is thus of priority concern to aim to achieve energetic independence. Just like other French overseas territories, Reunion policies have widely invested in Renewable Energy Sources (RES) since 2000. This paper aims at presenting the current status, the major achievements of policies and the future objectives in the deployment of renewable energy programmes. The perspective of a net zero energy island versus the pressure of the population is analysed. The barriers to penetration of RES in a small-scale territory are also discussed.     

Education and training in renewable energy sources in Serbia and Montenegro

This paper reports the status of Education and Training in Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in Serbia and Montenegro (SAM) at the end of May 2003. It was found that universities in SAM do not give diplomas in RES. RES subjects primarily solar and wind energy are taught at graduate levels. RES units are taught as a part of some classical engineering disciplines at undergraduate level especially in solar and biomass energy. Teaching is mainly at encyclopedic level and staff is mainly trained in general fields. This education may be regarded as unsatisfactory and should be expanded and intensified in future.     

Renewable energy resource potential in Pakistan

Pakistan energy situation is seriously troubling today due to lack of careful planning and implementation of its energy policies. To avoid the worse situation in the years ahead, the country will have to exploit its huge natural renewable resource. In this paper a review is being presented about renewable energy resource potential available in the country to be exploited for useful and consistent energy supplies. On average solar global insolation 5–7 kWh/m²/day, wind speed 5–7.5 m/s, Biogas 14 million m³/day, microhydel more than 600 MW (for small units) with persistency factor of more than 80% over a year exist in the country. Solar and wind maps are presented along with identification of hot spring sites as resource of geothermal energy. The research results presented in this paper are not only useful for government policy makers, executing agencies but also for private sector national and international agencies and stake holders who want to invest in Pakistan for renewable energy projects or business.     

Renewable energy resources in Syria

Renewable energy resources in the Syrian Arab Republic are surveyed. Potential of solar, wind and bio-mass resources and their promising applications are analyzed. The annual average long-term solar radiation on a horizontal plane is measured and found to be 5.2 kWh/m² per day. Wind speed measurements were conducted in more than twenty stations spread all over the country. The prospects of these measurements indicate that wind is another promising source of renewable energy in Syria. The registered annual mean daily wind speed in some regions of the country reaches more than 13 m/sec. Theoretical study estimates that the bio-gas production of the daily wastes of humans, animals and agriculture is higher than 300 million cubic meters per year.     

Sustainable energy usage in Oman—Opportunities and barriers

Energy is directly related to the most critical social issues which affect sustainable development. Today there is a great incentive for countries to exploit renewable energies in order to slow down the changes in environment and to guard against future trends. This paper presents a review of the assessed potential of renewable resources and practical limitations to their considerable use in the perspective of present scenarios and future projections of the national energy for Oman. Solar and wind are likely to play an important role in the future energy in Oman provided that clear policies are established by the higher authority for using renewable energy resources. Comparison of different solar energy technologies revealed that Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) technology may constitute a more appropriate choice for large solar power plants implementation in Oman. Moreover, Oman will not be alone in the region in this regard as similar moves are carried out in other Middle Eastern countries. The status of energy conservation and demand-side management are also discussed in the paper.     

Effect of wind energy system performance on optimal renewable energy model-an analysis

The Optimal Renewable Energy Model (OREM) has been developed to determine the optimum level of renewable energy sources utilisation in India for the year 2020–21. The model aims at minimising costefficiency ratio and determines the optimum allocation of different renewable energy sources for various end-uses. The extent of social acceptance level, potential limit, demand and reliability will decide the renewable energy distribution pattern and are hence used as constraints in the model. In this paper, the performance and reliability of wind energy system and its effects on OREM model has been analysed. The demonstration windfarm (4 MW) which is situated in Muppandal, a village in the southern part of India, has been selected for the study. The windfarm has 20 wind turbine machines of 200 KW capacity. The average technical availability, real availability and capacity factor have been analysed from 1991 to 1995 and they are found to be 94.1%, 76.4% and 25.5% respectively. The reliability factor of wind energy system is found to be 0.5 at 10,000 hours. The OREM model is analysed considering the above said factors for wind energy system, solar energy system and biomass energy systems. The model selects wind energy for pumping end-use to an extent of 0.3153×10¹⁵ KJ.     

The environmental and cost implications of solar energy preferences in Renewable Portfolio Standards

Many state-level Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) include preferences for solar generation, with goals of increasing the generation diversity, reducing solar costs, and encouraging local solar industries. Depending on their policy design, these preferences can impact the RPS program costs and emissions reduction. This study evaluates the impact of these policies on costs and emissions, coupling an economic dispatch model with optimized renewable site selection. Three policy designs of an increased RPS in Michigan are investigated: (1) 20% Solar Carve-Out, (2) 5% Distributed Generation Solar Carve-Out, and (3) 3× Solar Multiplier. The 20% Solar Carve-Out scenario was found to increase RPS costs 28%, while the 5% Distributed Generation Solar Carve-Out increased costs by 34%. Both of these solar preferences had minimal impact on total emissions. The 3× Solar Multiplier decreases total RPS program costs by 39%, but adds less than half of the total renewable generation of the other cases, significantly increasing emissions of CO₂, NO_x, and SO₂ relative to an RPS without the solar credit multiplier. Sensitivity analysis of the installed cost of solar and the natural gas price finds small changes in the results of the Carve-Out cases, with a larger impact on the 3× Solar Multiplier.     

Renewable energy systems: A societal and technological platform

Today, the analysis of renewable energy places the emphasis on the technological and economic attributes with social and environmental impact assessment providing for a rather static, narrow frame of analysis. The participation and response of social actors and other stakeholders is usually of a traditional type, with consultation documents and public meetings, collection of complaints and suggestion schemes. This often encourages parochialism and an over-concentration on relatively trivial issues. It is, therefore, imperative to establish a new participatory planning platform to incorporate the wider socio-economic aspects of renewable energy systems and to provide for an operational analytical decomposition of them. In this work the issue of decomposition analysis is clarified, and a new agenda for the societal and technological decomposition analysis of renewable energy systems is developed. A case study is disclosed to present the relevance of the established platform for integrated (renewable) energy systems planning. Innovative aspects comprise of the simultaneous inclusion of decision analysis and social acceptance methods and tools in concert with the related public participation techniques.     

Current utilization and future prospects of emerging renewable energy applications in Canada

Canada has vast renewable energy resources due to its extensive geography and traditionally they have played an important role, particularly prior to the turn of the 20th century. Public interest in new renewable energy technologies (RETs) emerged and grew during the oil shocks of the 1970s and early 1980s. Even though many Canadian provinces had been deriving most of their electricity from hydroelectric power, the first oil crises of the 1970s ignited a strong interest in all forms of renewable energy. Though Canada has huge prospects for low-impact RETs, it is falling behind most industrialized nations in the expansion of these technologies due to a lack of supporting market structures and the absence of appropriate government policies and initiatives. This review focuses on only applications of low-impact emerging RETs that refer to wind, solar, small hydro, geothermal, marine and modern biomass energy. Today, these technologies are mostly in the dissemination, demonstration and early stage of commercialization phase in Canada and currently they contribute less than 1% of the total primary energy consumption. It is evident from the past experience of Europe and Japan that environmentally benign RETs can contribute significantly toward Canada’s Kyoto target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by displacing the use of conventional fossil fuels, and help Canada take an essential step toward a sustainable energy future. In this paper, the current energy utilization scenario of Canada has been analyzed and an array of emerging RET applications has been presented under the category of: (i) green power technologies; (ii) green heat technologies; and (iii) green fuel technologies.     

Renewable energy from agro-residues in China: Solid biofuels and biomass briquetting technology

China has the abundant agro-residue resources, producing more than 630 million tons of agro-residues in 2006, and amounting to about 20% of total energy consumption in rural areas. Efficient utilization of enormous agro-residues resource is crucial for providing bioenergy, releasing risk of environmental pollution, and increasing farmers’ income. The paper presented the feasibility of densified solid biofuels technology for utilizing agro-residues in China. The output and distribution of agro-residues in recent 10 years, the R&D of briquetting technology, and the market of densified solid biofuels from agro-residues in China have been analyzed. The result indicated that the abundant agro-residue resources can provide the economical and sustainable raw material for densified solid biofuels development in China. The R&D of briquetting technology at present can strongly support the large scale production of densified solid biofuels. With continued improvement and cost reduction of briquetting technology, along with the support of nation energy policy on biomass energy, the market of densified solid biofuels from agro-residues in China will be more fully deployed. Based on the above mentioned key factors, development of densified solid biofuels from agro-residues in China will be promising and feasible.     

Renewable energy sources in the Egyptian electricity market: A review

This review paper presents an appraisal of renewable energy RE options in Egypt. An appraisal review of different REs is presented. The study shows that electric energy produced from REs in Egypt are very poor compared with other energy sources. The utilization of the renewable energies can also be a good opportunity to fight the desertification and dryness in Egypt which is about 60% of Egypt territory. The rapid growth of energy production and consumption is strongly affecting and being affected by the Egyptian economy in many aspects. It is evident that energy will continue to play an important role in the development of Egypt's economy in coming years. The total installed electricity generating capacity had reached around 22025 MW with a generating capacity reached 22605 MW at the end of 2007. Hydropower and coal has no significant potential increase. During the period 1981/82-2004/05 electricity generation has increased by 500% from nearly 22 TWh for the year 1981/1982 to 108.4 TWh in the year 2004/2005 at an average annual growth rate of 6.9%. Consequently, oil and gas consumed by the electricity sector has jumped during the same period from around 3.7 MTOE to nearly 21 MTOE. The planned installed capacity for the year 2011/2012 is 28813 MW and the required fuel (oil and gas) for the electricity sector is estimated to reach about 29 MTOE by the same year. The renewable energy strategy targets to supply 3% of the electricity production from renewable resources by the year 2010. Electrical Coverage Electrical energy has been provided for around 99.3% of Egypt's population, representing a positive sign for the welfare of the Egyptian citizen due to electricity relation to all development components in all walks of life. The article discusses perspectives of wind energy in Egypt with projections to generate ∼ 3.5 GWe by 2022, representing ∼9% of the total installed power at that time (40.2 GW). Total renewables (hydro + wind + solar) are expected to provide ∼7.4 GWe by 2022 representing ∼ 19% of the total installed power. Such a share would reduce dependence on depleting oil and gas resources, and hence improve country's sustainable development.     

Current status of renewable energy in Nepal: Opportunities and challenges

Energy is indispensible in modern society and is one of the most important components of socio-economic development. Nepal is one of the least developed countries with more than 80% of its population residing in rural communities. Per capita energy usage – often viewed as a key index of the development – in the country is far less than the global average per capita energy usage. The energy sector is dominated by the traditional energy sources such as fuel woods, crop residues and animal dung mainly for domestic usage contributing to about 86% of the national energy consumption. Currently 40% of the population has access to electricity, and the rural electrification accounts for only 29%. The majority of rural populations are meeting their energy needs by burning biomass in traditional stoves which has several environmental and public health issues. Nearly all fossil-derived fuels consumed in the country are imported in a refined form, and the perpetual increase in petroleum imports has adversely impacted the existing fragile economy of the country. Despite a huge potential in harnessing various renewable energy resources such as hydropower, solar power, wind energy and biofuels/bioenergy, these resources have not been sustainably captured due to geographical, technical, political and economical reasons. This paper presents a brief account of Nepal's renewable energy resources and the current status of various renewable energy technologies (RETs) such as micro-hydro, solar power, wind energy, biofuel/bioenergy, improved cook stoves, and improved water mill. It also highlights the opportunities and barriers for the development of RETs. Finally this paper presents some recommendations for the promotion, development and implementation of RETs in the country.     

Assessing complementarity of wind and solar resources for energy production in Italy. A Monte Carlo approach

Wind and solar energy are expected to play a major role in the current decade to help Europe reaching the renewable energy penetration targets fixed by Directive 2009/28/EC. However, it is difficult to predict the actual production profiles of wind and solar energy as they depend heavily on variable meteorological features of solar radiation and wind speed. In an ideal system, wind and solar electricity are both injected in a fast reacting grid instantaneously matching supply and demand. In such a system wind and solar electricity production profiles should complement each other as much as possible in order to minimise the need of storage and additional capacity. In the present paper the complementarity of wind and solar resources is assessed for a test year in Italy.To achieve this goal we employ data at high spatial and temporal resolution data for both solar radiation and wind speed in Italy obtained from running two state of the art models (PVGIS and MINNI). Hourly profiles for solar and wind energy produced are compared in each 4 × 4 km² grid cell in Italy for 2005, and hourly, daily and monthly correlation coefficients are computed in order to assess the local complementarity of the two resources. A Monte Carlo approach is also developed to estimate how large-scale wind and solar energy productions could be potentially involved to complement each other in a scenario with up to 100 production sites across Italy. The results show how local complementarity can be very interesting with monthly correlation coefficients reaching values lower than −0.8 in several areas. Large-scale complementarity is also relevant with nation-wide monthly correlation coefficients showing values between −0.65 and −0.6. These model results indicate that in this sample year of 2005, wind and solar energy potential production have shown complementary time behaviour complementary, favourably supporting their integration in the energy system.     

Solar and wind energy potential and utilization in Pakistan

Pakistan needs substantial amount of energy to develop its industry and to increase the agricultural productivity. The available indigenous energy resources are limited. The only option which the country has to pursue is renewable energy. This paper identifies the potentials of solar and wind energy. The prime sites for wind are coastal area, arid zone and hill terrains. Solar energy is abundant over most part of the country, maximum being received over Quetta valley.     

Renewable energy sources in the Mexican electricity sector

This paper analyzes the role of renewable energy sources (RES) in the Mexican electricity sector in the context of the proposed renewable energy bill currently under consideration in the Mexican Congress. This paper was divided into three parts. The first part presents a chronology of institutional background related to the RES. This is followed by an analysis of the coordination and management system of the Mexican electricity sector, which can facilitate the promotion and integration of the RES without significant structural changes. Finally, the pros and cons of the renewable energy bill are analyzed in order to demonstrate the need for greater coherence between the bill and the coordination system of the sector. It is concluded that when inconsistency is eliminated, RES would strongly be promoted in Mexico.     

Wind energy and assessment of wind energy potential in Turkey

In this study, the potential of wind energy and assessment of wind energy systems in Turkey were studied. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the wind energy potential and future wind conversion systems project in Turkey. The wind energy potential of various regions was investigated; and the exploitation of the wind energy in Turkey was discussed. Various regions were analyzed taking into account the wind data measured as hourly time series in the windy locations. The wind data used in this study were taken from Electrical Power Resources Survey and Development Administration (EIEI) for the year 2010. This paper reviews the assessment of wind energy in Turkey as of the end of May 2010 including wind energy applications. Turkey's total theoretically available potential for wind power is around 131,756.40 MW and sea wind power 17,393.20 MW annually, according to TUREB (TWEA). When Turkey has 1.5 MW nominal installed wind energy capacity in 1998, then this capacity has increased to 1522.20 MW in 2010. Wind power plant with a total capacity of 1522.20 MW will be commissioned 2166.65 MW in December 2011.