There’s a technology already available that makes petroleum companies join hands with renewable energy. This technology exists to make existing grids better. So what’s this company — Lightsource, UK’s largest solar installer and the third-largest installer in the world outside China.

BP and Lightsource

BP acquired 43% of the company and it was renamed Lightsource BP. One of the biggest problems regarding electricity supply has been matching supply and demand. Electricity is produced on demand, not stored. So power plants generally estimate the demand every day and produce electricity as such.

Real and Reactive Power

The point is to maintain a balance between real power and reactive power. Real power is the power that turns your appliances on when you flick the switch, but every device has a voltage and current rating. So maintaining this voltage and current levels are necessary grid wide. (You cannot connect a 220V toaster on 180V, it will break). Else it will cause huge damage to distribution and generation equipment and cause large blackouts.

Reactive power is generated or absorbed on the grid in general by generators, this is called voltage support
If voltage support is required, The generator provides voltage assistance. Then it can grow quite heated, which might be dangerous, diminish this ability to provide genuine results power that customers may put to use and that is how genuine power is provided. Electricity generators are compensated based on their output. As a result of the wholesale energy market, the grid usually has to adjust for sources of this revenue loss via out-of-market payments. But this allows massive amounts of energy to be transmitted using existing infrastructure.

The Inverter

Solar panels produce DC while AC is used for transmission and running appliances. So pannels use an inverter to convert DC to AC.So Lightsource BP with a bit of tinkering in the software of the inverters has developed a way to use them as reactive energy providers. At night time when solar panels are dormant, the inverter can be used to reduce or increase voltage levels as required before sending them back out.

Lighthouse BP in 2019 conducted their trial in East Sussex in the South of England to provide reactive power support service. In which the inverters acted as a bridge to steer up and down the voltage as required. This whole addition of inverters increased network safety and reliability with no adverse effect on the customer.

Conclusion

Solar power will play a huge part in the renewable transition, but as we make the transition we have to improve the current grid to make existing tech more reliable. This trial run after three years of testing was made part of the national grid in the UK. As solar plants provide more support at night time the returns increase making it a more viable and usable source of energy.

Solar Works At Night. Here’s How. was originally published in Darvin Energy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

International Solar Alliance 2018 Meeting

Prime Minister Modi announces “One Sun, One World, One Grid”.
The plan? — Connect 140 Countries to a common grid and transfer power.

The sun is always shining in some part of the world, so capture solar power from a sunny region and transfer it to regions in shade, or from countries where it’s the day to places that are in night’s darkness.

The Plan — 2 Zones, India at the Centre

The Eastern Zone comprising of Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and a Western Zone covers the Middle East and stretches across Africa.
India intends to connect South East Asia and the Middle East being in the centre and sharing energy resources. Then expand across the African and even to the European Continent

Competition

While India moves ahead with its ambitious plans other countries are not lagging. Tunisia and Morocco have greatly implemented renewable energy sources with low fossil fuel dependency. Morroco has signed deals for underwater energy cable with Spain.
And China too has been heavily investing in infrastructure in North African Countries. The Belt and Road initiative has been a fierce competition combined with its experience in mass manufacturing and scaling up supply chains low priced deals are offered. These deals are a blessing to most countries that still do not have a reliable energy supply.

Australia is building a network connecting to Singapore by 2027 the plan includes building some of the largest solar and battery farms.

Criticism

While plans are stunning to look there are certain key points to look at.
The adoption of Batteries negates the factor of following the sun. Storage technologies have been growing up at a great rate and they would eliminate the need to have a supply all day long. The economics that would play a key part is the cost. Cost of transmission vs Cost of storage.
In addition to storage, local small grids built by communities aka mico grids are far less vulnerable. They would be interconnected to the grid but they also reduce the national load and the demands of a particular region will be met by its builder and contributors which brings in huge accountability. Also, weather and foreign attacks would not be able to jeopardize the system when it is distributed.

In the end, numbers play the deciding factor, the unit economics of storage and various new technologies that are currently being built will shape the future and they might just guarantee India’s “One Sun, One World, One Grid”.

Visit Us at — https://darvinenergy.tech/.

India The Energy Centre. One Sun, One World, One Grid. Explained. was originally published in Darvin Energy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So How is Delhi Powered?

Delhi has Six power plants, four coal-based and two gas-based. All together making up 3000MW.Unfortunately, India is not a country with a great gas supply and both of the gas power plants either lay idle or generate less than maximum capability. Btw coal and gas-powered electricity cost are similar. Along with this, there are renewables and central grid exchange also form a significant supply source.

Coal — The origin and end of problems.

Power plants are facing a coal shortage not nationwide but worldwide. Power plants are required to have 14 days worth of coal stock but are now reporting to have only 2–4 days worth of stock and this is the cause for worry.

So Mine some more Coal. Right?

While economies recover from covid 19 and begin production, demand for energy rises. But there was a huge surge in demand and coal-powered plants were not quite prepared for this. Unlike appliances, power plants take time to power up and start production, it can be tens of hours to few days(that’s why power plants never shut down but had to due to Covid-19). The surge was in the range of 20billion (20000000000) units more compared to 2019, yes demand went up a lot.

A lot of storms went by this year and brought in a lot of rainfall. Rain in coal production areas led to less production and a lot of transport issues. And Imports from outside the country have decreased and prices increased sharply because this is an international crisis (China, Britain, France, Germany everyone is facing record-high energy rates and blackouts).

What is Next for us?

In the short term, Be ready not just for blackouts but for job losses, unavailability of products a shortage of essential services and goods like water. Without electricity factories won’t run, people will not have jobs and pumps will not work. But remember the government has set up special teams to monitor coal supplies and is amping up its coal imports. People are working to make sure the worst does not come to play.

Long term? Huge bills. Record high electricity prices and increased times of load shedding, power cuts and low voltages. Per unit cost of electricity for residential and commercial segments are to reach record and displeased customers are about to increase.

What Can I Even Do about It? Simple -Build a Power Plant.

Yea we are not talking about a Thermal Power Plant that costs crores. We indeed need power every day and there are no alternatives to the supplier. Well, that’s quite wrong, at least till Darvin Energy is here. We allow communities to build their power plants using their buildings, this is achieved with the right mix of solar panels generating power and batteries storing it for later purposes. It’s quite expensive, yes for an individual but not for our whole community, through the very small contributions of every person in an interconnected community a huge difference can be made. With 70K houses on average, we will be able to generate 330MW (that’s as big as PPCL Pragati — Gas station). Also, you will have the lowest rates of electricity ever (even less than half the current price). It will be a grid that you and I, members of our community whom we know and live with that build and power each other.

It's clean, green energy and very cheap electricity. But it is a collaborative where all of us have to come together to start building one of the greatest revolutions ever.

Join us and let's build something great —Get In Touch With Us — Click here.

Delhi It’s About to Get Worse. Yes Electricity Problems was originally published in Darvin Energy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tesla earlier this month just announced that it will be moving forward with the VPP ( Virtual Power Plant ) Program in California that Tesla rooftop and Powerwall owners will be able to sign up for starting July 22nd. This will allow users to be connected to the grid and be able to sell and store electricity at the cheapest price ever. Basically, homes with a solar panel and a battery pack will become — Power Plants.

What is this Virtual Power Plant?

Just like the sports games on your phone or computer the Virtual Power Plant is a simulation of a real one. But here we actually generate electricity and not make dunks that don’t matter ever.

Let’s picture this, it’s a hot summer day and you have turned on your AC (Air conditioning) well chances are it’s not just you but your whole city has their ACs on at the same time. Turning on so many ACs at once brings in a problem of supply and demand. Our power plants can produce only up to a certain amount.

The Solution?

Load-Shedding or Peaker Power Plant.

Although a cheaper solution, the former one means that a part of the grid remains shut down during peak time. (No AC during the hottest time of the day). This obviously affects the users of the grid.
Peaker Power Plants are generally high power plants that run only to fulfil the peak time demand. These are very carbon-intensive (read: highly polluting) and take a long time to startup. Generally an hour or two. Sometimes more than 12 hours!

So Instead of doing any of the two, power companies just buy the excess power from other utility companies. But due to high demand, the price for energy goes up by almost 10 times. And although the utility companies are buying it, you are the one paying it (bills).

Why worry about it?

Today an outage in electricity is a serious problem not just for big companies, today the world has become more dependent on the internet, automation based, more dependent on electricity.

Functionality drops with the lack of power, and that affects small businesses and large businesses alike. But more than that variable weather conditions have become the new normal, meaning storms, floods, droughts and high temperatures are more common than before. This problem is going to get worse and this is where the answer lies

The Answer.

Solar Panels. Batteries. Software.

Solar Panels the generator. As their increased popularity and decreased prices make it clear solar panels are one of the best ways to generate electricity. So in a house, a typical solar panel setup of 5Kw generates enough electricity to power all home appliances throughout the day with some extra. With net metering, we can sell this extra electricity off and buy it back at a cheaper price. But for those without such net metering ability generally, store it off in batteries. These act as power backup for obvious reasons.

The Batteries now fully charged have the ability to power up almost anything. But it’s so that your neighbour requires some extra electricity, so you can power through the VPP. How does it work?

The crucial part — The software. In today’s modern network switches are no longer controlled physically and can be automated to switch on and off at times. And the software does exactly so it can analyse, predict and cutoff and protect the house from noisy electricity. So the software analyses our neighbour’s electricity demand (whom we assume to be a member of the VPP) and supplies it from our batteries and we get paid for it. And the reverse happens when we run at a loss for energy and the neighbour supplies it. This would be a huge program with thousands of people, so the number of neighbours would increase and the power supplied would be from each other and not a big sort of power plant.

So How Feasible would this be?

This means each home can deliver about 6.5 KW of electricity for four hours at least.

So now how many houses would we need for this?

Tesla has till now installed 200,000 powerwall installations and plans to do 30–35k this quarter. They have at least 80k orders but are limited by chip shortages.

So What does it mean In the End?

This is what this means. An end to monopolisation of the energy industry. The utilities will gradually lose their power to charge exorbitant prices by adding that to your bills. You will be in charge of your electricity generation and so will your community. This will be more like a community-managed power plant and the benefit would be for every person for being a part of it. This will be more than paying less for your electricity bills, it will be increased reliability, more power and the best price because this is not managed by Tesla it’s managed by you and your software.

Tesla Is Now Paying Users for Electricity. was originally published in Darvin Energy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Elephant In The Room.

Starting with Nuclear. When we say nuclear power one of the first pictures that comes to our mind is HBO’s Chernobyl. While Chernobyl is the poster boy, other incidents like Three Mile Island (USA) and Fukushima (Japan) also add to the paranoia. In general, anything associated with the word Nuclear screams DANGER, and they are dangerous. Radiation released by these accidents has caused various genetic disorders, cancer and much more which affect generations, not to mention the deaths caused directly and indirectly due to the exposure to huge radiation.

But research and statistics seem to point in the opposite direction. Nuclear Power Plants seem to save lives. WHAT! Yes, where nuclear power plants displace coal power plants they seem to save lives. This seems to be due to the less radiation emitted and decreased air pollution. While this is a reliable source of safety a lot of speculation is required when renewables are put to a much larger scale.

The major danger lies in leaks from power plants and faulty storage methods. These have been the major causes of the radiation-related disaster, while some have their causes defined by natural causes and other such variables, a lot can be attributed to mismanagement. Although these have been fatal they have been great learning points on how to manage nuclear power and build a clear system around the whole supply process.

SO is nuclear a safe way to generate electricity. YES! When managed properly and carefully.

It’s a lot like driving your car, it’s dangerous and a bit difficult but if managed properly it can be one of the greatest gifts ever. Hopefully, we get self-driven Nuclear Plants one day but till then let's pin our autonomous dreams to cars. (for now)

Now that all the dangerous stuff is out of the way let’s talk about energy.

Nuclear and Solar are quite low carbon energy sources when compared to general coal-powered plants. Buts let's compare them more in-depth so, compare their lifetime emissions.

(Lifetime Emissions = Emissions from Electricity Generation + emissions from construction and deconstruction) . Looking at data from IPCC.

Solar and Nuclear have almost similar carbon costs But there lies a catch. Costs for solar power have been going down mainly because of the higher efficiency of the cells and the decrease in the price of manufacturing. Nuclear on the other hand is quite costly because of the cost to build and deconstruct the plants. For the construction of plants, huge amounts of concrete are required which is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. Still, these are much less than those of the coal power plants. So looking at short term emissions nuclear lags behind a lot, but given a longer time period, the costs seem to be quite similar for both systems.

But Nuclear does win in capacity. It is efficient in the sense that it provides vast amounts of energy in a relatively small area. Undeniably solar too can generate almost any amount of electricity required but it comes at the cost of huge land requirements and that is a big deal. (psst... Check out Darvin Energy’s Hurricane Tiles. They generate 30% more than any solar setup, so less area and more power for you.)

Nuclear also in fact integrates much more easily with the already existing infrastructure of grid power generation because no new lines have to be created from the existing grid. Whereas for solar the grid has to essentially be redesigned to distribute electricity in two directions ( a viable solution might be microgrids). Nuclear plants are also quite stable, meaning they have the ability to ramp up or down as required, unlike solar which would need additional batteries or some sort of storage.

But Nuclear plants are costly and sometimes even the transmissions costs are higher than what people can afford in sparsely populated areas. Solar on the other hand creates a more distributed and decentralized power distribution system with each supply for themselves and then pumping back the excess into the grid. So rich areas with high population densities should opt for nuclear power as that makes sense, but in developing countries where cash is not so readily available and the population is not so concentrated solar offer the helping hand.

Conclusion

Solar in comparison is cheaper to build, has less of a carbon footprint and is the way to electrify most of the un-electrified areas. But to build it you need huge infrastructure and more storage facilities to offer stability. Although Nuclear would fit great with the existing infrastructure it is costly and time-consuming to build (the average time to build a nuclear plant is 108 months). The point here lies: Nuclear is feasible and necessary. There are a lot of estimates that put countries like the USA in a position to be 80% dependent on renewable energy sources like solar and wind without the need for Nuclear in the near future. Australia also seems to say that it powers 100% from renewable energy sources without any mention of Nuclear Energy. Nuclear then seems to not be necessary at all, but the truth is much different from expected …

Continued in Part 2.

Sources-https://pastebin.com/VvHrejvR

Visit Us — https://darvinenergy.tech

Solar Or Nuclear. There’s a Clear Winner. Part 1 was originally published in Darvin Energy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

India and China at the time of their independence were at a relatively same socio-economic status. But China somehow seems to have leapt through a lot of growth and progress in the green energy sector in the last decade.

A global study conducted in 2017 found that the rate of extreme poverty globally was decreased from 35.3 per cent in 1990 to an estimated 9.6 per cent in 2015. That indicates more than a billion people in the world lifted out of poverty. Although the numbers may sound quite dramatic, there is a false sense of progress lunged in it. Of the one billion people, the majority, about 730 million are from China. China was able to reduce poverty form 66.6 per cent in 1990 to less than 2 per cent in 2015.

China’s transition since the beginning of this century has been widely underappreciated and unnoticed. China has made substantial progress in almost all fronts from digital to hardware.

But this high growth comes at a cost, the production cost — an exponential energy demand. When a single country manufactures more goods than any other country it has to have a high energy demand. And just like most countries, they expanded preferring coal-powered plants.

China And Their Image. The Why?

In 2008 China hosted the Olympics for the first time in the capital city of Beijing. This was the first time the curtains were lifted on the country and Western Media was allowed inside, it was the time to showcase their prowess and development to the world through the most-watched televised international event. For this reason, China went to great lengths they stopped all industrial production centres in the capital city, placed a new ban on the cars in the area, and even controlled the rain on the auspicious night all to look bright. But the days following did not prove bright for its image as athletes had cancelled or changed events because of its signature smog covered air. Contrary to popular belief the officials did consider this as a problem and had mainstream media reporting on it, this is because it was not only affecting cities like Linfen in Shanxi Province (VICE has extensively reported on this), it was affecting major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen. It got to such a point that planes couldn’t land, people couldn’t view their hands in front of them. Instead of considering it as a backlash China embraced the problem and took to investing in renewable energy sources. From cleaning smog chocked skies, polluted water, and land to enhancing energy security have become their main goal to be achieved over the year. China views this “Big Push” to renewables not just as an environmental strategy but equally as a business and developmental strategy complemented with the production of wind turbines, solar cells, LEDs, electric vehicles, and many more. China’s 21st Century strategies are focused on scaling up renewable energy to power their modernization in terms of smart grids, high-speed rail, industrial expansion with less reliance on fossil fuels.

The Green Revolution strategy

A renewable energy generation system powered by water, wind, and solar of capacity higher than the four preceding countries USA, Germany, India, and Spain combined in capacity added (as of 2019). China’s per capita CO2 emissions are low compared to other developed countries but with the highest population of 1.3 billion people, the largest car market produces a quarter of worldwide emissions. From China’s perspective, they view their strategies akin to that of Britain’s coal-powered 19th Century Industrial revolution and America’s 20th Century oil-based strategies that took it to superpower status.

• Availability

Another world Bank statics report mentions that electricity is available to 99.7 per cent of China’s population. Even with such high availability creating universal access to power remains a central goal. Further increase in industrial capacity with a focus on manufacturing the most energy-intensive area has been the propagating factor. In a sort of recursive way, China focussed on manufacturing units like solar panels and wind turbines that supply renewable energy in excess, further decreasing reliance on fossil fuels.

• Investment

Rather than focusing blindly on increasing generation capacity, the focus was put on making processes more energy-efficient, and such investments were made in those areas. In making energy-efficient they tackle the problem at the core with the creation of less pollution. As a fact, China has some of the most energy-intensive industries in the world like aluminium, steel, and cement production. (Fun Fact: China had poured more concrete by 2014 in three years than the U.S in the entire 20th Century.).Their global production capacity accounts for more than half in each of the three above mentioned industries. In recent observations, it has been noticed that China has been lowering its energy intensity (Except in 2001 when it began the rapid industrialization). Unlike its Western counterparts, China has continually reduced its energy intensity for example by 2014 it reduced by 4.8 per cent and set a further reduction target by 3.1 per cent in the following year.

• Carbon Intensity

Due to its high global contribution to global carbon emissions, carbon intensity is the major target of reductions. In comparing the reduction there had been a 17percent reduction in the five years of 2010 to 2015 and aim for a 45 per cent reduction by 2020 (in comparison to 2005 levels). These are some commitments made at the Copenhagen Conference of Parties in 2009, which China aims to achieve. Even with a late start in industrialization, China aims to fulfil its duty of reducing carbon emissions they have started to peak its energy revolution by 2030 (after which it continues a downtrend). Some have even estimated that they might meet this achievement well before the date.

So What about India. Is there hope?

For India, the problem is much more varied and the solution isn’t so simple but it does have certain areas to work upon and improvements to make. The government with the people of India has made quite progresses in electricity generation and distribution. Major problems aside India still faces a lot of challenges in this region which were even worse for China at a certain point in time. The major problem starts with the production side. The only sector of the economy where the demand is far higher than supply (20% shortfall). To achieve certain goals policies need to change, policies that regulate the unmetered agricultural load segment which is a huge part, along with rules to regulate theft of power which has left the Discoms broke. Huge growth is required and to shed the losses and to reach an industrial peak.

From the above example of the Chinese infrastructure, India can learn to convert its atrocities to advantages. In the precedent of events of the former years, India has started ramping up industrial production and renewable integrations. In terms of manufacturing and energy sectors, India has started ramping up its capacity and is starting to create a level field with its neighbour. But like mentioned before the problem is not simple and the solution comes with a lot of challenges in its sense.

In the face of such challenges, individual Indians have seemed to have taken up matters into their own hands along with the government. India with its great talent pool of people has already started integration of batteries and solar modules forming the basis of smart/microgrids. Being late to the party means that India will have the ability to leapfrog its way to more energy-efficient and energy secure infrastructure. Unlike most nations, India will not be needing a total revamp of its infrastructure but a new smart way of integration. In the current growth progress, India not has a chance to outdo its progress but also the rest of the world, all we need is hope and our willingness to see through the dark into the bright future of The Largest Green Revolution.

Thank you for the read!

Resources- https://pastebin.com/cgrzQB6S

China’s Green Revolution Story. India might have a chance to beat them. was originally published in Darvin Energy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.