Swapnil Bankhele Student ID: 51123193

Dear Sir,

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity for preparing a report on a renewable technology. The report gives you a brief summary of solar energy, its advantages and disadvantages, application and the two major types of electricity generation techniques from solar power. Furthermore it also tells you about the Solar Power India and the ways in which India will be completing the targets which they have set. It concludes with the future aspect of solar energy, as the technology needs to be developed a lot so as to reduce the cost, which will benefit the solar power generation. Hope this report provides you with sufficient details about solar energy.

Thanking you.

Yours Faithfully, Swapnil Bankhele

A Report on Solar Energy

85% of the energy we daily use, comes from fossil fuels which are declining day by day, and the day is not too far when we will run out of these resources. Hence the need and demand of time is to search for different type of resources which can meet the energy demand of the world. The main focus should be on the renewable energy as it is available in plenty and there is no harm of pollution to the environment as compared to oil and gas. Renewable energy is obtained from natural processes which are constantly restored after a certain time period. It is generally obtained from sun as solar power, deep from earths crust as a heat medium, from wind, ocean etc.

Different types of Renewable Energy. 1) Solar energy 2) Wind Energy 3) Hydropower 4) Biomass Energy 5) Biofuel Energy 6) Geothermal Energy

Solar Energy
It is the energy which is obtained from sun in the form of solar radiation, which is available in abundance and is an inexhaustible source of energy. The use of solar energy is being done for a long time now, but its in recent time that we have started generating electricity from it. A very small amount of suns energy hits the earths surface which is far more than enough to satisfy all the needs of manpower. The power intercepted by earth is likely to be 1.8 x 1011 MW which is huge in terms of present rate of consumption of all commercial energy resources, which makes it the most promising type of unconventional energy resource as it will be able to satisfy all our present and future needs. Solar energy can be used to provide electricity for commercial use as well as a direct source for heating.

World Solar energy Map

*The area which is shown in the red zone has the greatest potential for production of energy from solar radiation. Classification of Solar energy utilization.

Solar power is the conversion of solar radiation into electricity either directly with the use of photovoltaics or indirectly by using concentrated solar power. Concentrated solar power (fig a)system consists of a lens or a mirror and a tracking system which focuses a comparatively larger are of sunlight and converts it into a small beam, whereas photovoltaic (fig b) converts the sun rays incident directly into electricity using the photoelectric effect. 3

Fig a) concentrated solar power Advantages of Solar Energy Available in plenty. Environment friendly. Low/No maintenance.

Fig b) Photovoltaic

Disadvantages of Solar Energy Initial high costs involved. It takes a huge space for installation as to achieve the desired output with efficiency. It also majorly depends upon the position of sun, Energy from solar cannot be obtained during night time. The main disadvantage is that it is a dilute source as the radiation flux will not exceed 1kW/m2 in the sunniest region of the world. Different types of solar Applications Architecture and urban planning Agriculture and horticulture Solar Power Solar Thermal Solar vehicles Solar chemicals 4

Solar Power in INDIA

The solar mission India majorly known as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. This mission was launched by the initiative taken by the both the Government of India and State Government to meet the energy challenges, and also to meet the challenges of climate change. The objective of this mission is to install and commission 20000MW solar power projects across the country by the year 2022 in three phases, using solar photovoltaics and solar thermal in a 50:50 ratio. As seen in the world solar energy map above India lies in the zone of tropic of cancer, where there is plenty of solar energy available for a longer period of the day. The solar energy irradiance available in India is 1900-2200 kWh/m2 which in itself shows a huge potential for energy. Proposed Roadmap To achieve the target of the mission of producing solar energy of 20000MW, this project was divided into three phases and will be completed in the following way as shown in the table below:

*As of today a total of 112.1 MW of solar power plants have been installed and commissioned. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India, cited 9th Nov 2011] Challenges & Constraints for solar energy in India. Availability of land for solar installation. A very slow movement of projects undertaken. Government support.

Conclusion As a major result of climate change many countries have already started working in terms of shifting their gear for energy production towards renewable energy. Solar energy has a lot of potential for serving the entire energy demand for the future. According to a report The sun can produce 10,000 times as much energy as the Earth uses at the turn of the 21st century. The future of solar energy will depend upon the way it is utilised by the mankind for its benefits. The future of solar energy lies in the technology development and how cheap it can be made available for use.

Bibliography 1. Alternative Energy Resources [Online] [Cited 31st Oct 2011] http://www.alternative-energy-resources.net/solarenergydisadvantages.html 2. Solar energy by S.P.Sukhatme (2006), Pg no. 22, 23 3. [Online] [Cited1st Nov 2011] http://purepointenergy.blogspot.com/2010/10/solarenergy-for-dummies.html 4. [Online] [Cited 1st Nov2011] http://www.eere.energy.gov/basics/renewable_energy/linear_concentrator.html 5. Report on Jawaharlal Nehru solar mission India http://india.gov.in/allimpfrms/alldocs/15657.pdf 6. What is future of Solar energy [online][cited 9th nov 2011] http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-future-of-solar-energy.htm