solar heating

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Is your boiler truly efficient?

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Given that your boiler accounts for the majority of your heating fuel bill, I am sure you are constantly looking at ways to improve its efficiency.  In a typical industrial environment, even at its best, your boiler can only be 85% efficient. Do you monitor the performance of your boiler at plant load condition?  Are you aware of how these losses contribute to your boiler’s inefficiency? Radiation and Exhaust losses Start-up losses Pre & post purge losses Loss at high turn down Loss during change of loads Idle and stand-by losses Download to know more about these losses. At Aspiration Energy provide renewable energy solutions in the areas of Solar Thermal, Solar Photovoltaic, and Energy Efficiency Services. As part of our Energy efficiency services, we offer True Boiler Efficiency services that will help you uncover your actual costs on boiler. Kanchana. R Head – Operations

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CSP vs CST

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In other words:  Solar Power vs Solar Heat Solar PV for generating electricity using Solar modules has been gaining immense attention worldwide. Small CSP? I do not believe there is an opportunity for small scale CSP.  However, a lot of micro-grids and mini-grids are coming up at rural areas in India with Bio-mass and Solar PV.  Companies like Desi Power, Gram Power, mera gaon power, OMC power,  are all doing good work in this area.  If and when small scale CSP plants become economical, they can play a role.  I am not seeing it any time soon. On the other hand, CST (Concentrated Solar Thermal) is certainly a good opportunity for Indian industry.  Some early installations are doing well.  In the mid-term I expect that to pick up. However, we are betting more on ETC based technologies without tracking in the lower temperatures of 60-150 Deg C.  Here are our reasons: CST is a relatively newer technology, and there are still technology kinks that needs to be worked out.  On the other hand, what we are doing in terms of system level and slight technology modifications of ETC collectors is just incremental innovation, and hence more reliable.  Just to give a perspective – SHIP database, as is referred by IEA (link), has identified many industrial applications across the world. Another statistic:  Against the installed base of solar PV in the world of 175+ GW.  Solar heating is more than 300 GW .  Significant share of this is ETC based technology, and hence the technology kinks of the underlying technology of evacuated tubes are fully solved, and it is proven for decades. All said and done, CST costs are higher than basic ETC based collectors KW to KW or KWH to KWH.  That is another constraint. CST collects only DNI whereas ETC at lower temperatures collect GHI, which makes ETC energy plants\’s PLF much more than that of CST.  Economics rule the roost here. ETC based plants can be implemented on factory rooftops whereas CST needs ground space or RCC roofs. These factors make us bet more on ETC based lower temperature solutions.  Coupled with the recent drop in fossil fuel prices, and the above factors, I feel CST will take longer for adoption in India compared to ETC based solar heaters for the industry.

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Better late than never – October 2014 events

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It has been a month since I wrote a blog post.  I noticed that there were few interesting programs I attended during the month of October and November but missed out writing about them. Thought of sharing it now,  it is better to be late than never 🙂 I attended 2 events within a span of 3 days – both focused on our field: The first was a stakeholder Workshop – II on “Vision and Action Plan for development of decentralized solar thermal in India ” on October 14, 2014 in New Delhi.  This was conducted by Shakti Foundation and Greentech knowledge solutions. Sameer Maithel, spoke about the Chasm in Industrial Process Heat. How real! How insightful! Yes, we have such huge number of leads – we are talking with who-is-who of the industry – TVS, Tata, Godrej, ITC, Mahindra, and so on. But, even in our sales cycle – it is a chasm – the technical evaluation gets over, the commercial evaluation gets over – but before it translates to Purchase Order, there is a Chasm. The chasm is one of getting all the stakeholders together and making them fully motivated to transact. I am happy to see that the industry is seeing this Chasm and making efforts to close it. We can all read this book: Crossing the chasm The second was a Workshop on monitoring, design and certification of solar process heat on 16 October 2014 in New Delhi.  This was conducted by So-Pro India. Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secreatry of MNRE attended both the sessions. This shows the growing interest in our chosen area. I am very happy that this often neglected area is grabbing attention. Both sessions talked about how we can get policy / market awareness and credibility changes to grow the market for Solar Heating. There was a significant focus on Solar Heat for Industrial Process (SHIP) So-Pro event was 100% focused on Industrial process heat. One thing of great note here – like in any business, the quality of entrepreneurs and eco-system during the initial period determines the growth of the industry. In that sense, it is great to be part of this community – the people who were present were tachnically, commercially and behaviorally so competent to understand issues, their solutions and way to take this industry forward. Great to be part of this community.

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High temperature

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New vacuum tube collector that generates heat up to 120 deg C. Very interesting article and technology. Our combined approaches of Integrative concentration™, StayLiquid™ , FlexiFlow™ are already creating temperatures like 110 deg C in our installation in Padi, Chennai. It is doing so at least for 5 hours in a day for a minimum of 250 days in a year! Once we install scaled system of our new innovation in U-tube type ETC collectors, I am positive we can cross 120 deg C. We are hoping that this innovation above can be much lower in cost than what we can do with U-tube.

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Solar Energy Vs Solar Power – 3

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Credit: Ron Tandberg My earlier blog post talks about Solar Power and Solar Energy and recommends to add Solar Energy to our vocabulary. But, the revolutionary change that we pride ourselves with – is to specify solar heaters in terms of power KWth instead of in terms of energy – Litres Per Day – LPD.  Oxymoron! LPD – Litres Per Day vs KWth Solar heaters have been traditionally specified as LPD meaning – Litres Per Day.  Why? The traditional solar heaters have been worldwide used in domestic water heaters.  When do we need hot water at home?  Mornings.  Does the sun shine in the mornings?  No.  So, essentially, we are collecting sunlight and solar energy that shone yesterday and using it today.  In that scenario, it is good to express the capacity as LPD – How many useful Litres of hot water can be generated per day. LPD essentially represents the energy collected throughout the day. LPD vs KWth – how to represent the size of solar heaters? But, when it comes to Solar Process Heating systems, we need to work on generating the high temperature required consistently during the day.  That means, we need to have the “power” to heat requisite quantity of water instantly using solar generation. That is why we specify our collectors in terms of KWth! Here are other articles that talks about KWth rating of solar heater collectors. Methodology to present the installed capacity of solar collectors in GWth Simple method for Converting Installed Solar Collector Area to Annual Collector Output ~ Bhoo, CEO, Aspiration Energy

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SolarMax – 2

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A follow up article on our earlier post SolarMax principle One example to make a difference between LoadMax and SolarMax amply clear is to take an example of Street Lights. Let’s take a standard model – Sharp Street Light. Lets take the model: SSLL 1018 The basic light there is a 18W light. Load per day:  Let’s say the 18W light runs for 12 hours – Dusk to Dawn 18W x 12 Hours = 216 WHr is what is needed per day. Let us look at what thay have designed it with: Solar capacity:  80 W. 216 WHr / 80 W = Less than 3 hours. So, the solar street light is designed to produce enough energy within 3 hours of sunshine. Sounds great and logical – when you evaluate from a general LoadMax principle.  But, imagine this – more than 300 days a year, sunshine will be for more than 5 hours.  So, Every single day on 300 days a year, 80W x 2 = 160 Whr is wasted.  And, we pay for that generation upfront. Lets take batteries:  12 V, 75 AH.  Not to be a purist in battery design for ease of calculations – I will consider VxAH as a proxy for WHr. 12 V x 75 AH = 900 VAH or approximately 900 WHr. We observed above that the requisite WHr per day is only 216 Whr.  So, this is designed with 4 times the requisite capacity. I am not taking accurate figures.  For an application like solar street light where Hybridization with existing conventional sources of power is difficult, and where the focus is on automated reliable operations, I have no arguments against this design philosophy.  And, battery design is more to do with Depth of Discharge and life-time of batteries. But, I am taking this as an illustration of LoadMax principle. If there were backup conventional sources available – I would build this with a 50W module and 50 Ah battery – which is far more economical.  That will be “SolarMax”. One word of caution though: SolarMax immediately means that it needs to be hybrid – to take care of low generation periods of solar energy.  Wherever hybrids are not possible or feasible or desirable – we need to go back to LoadMax.

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Solar Energy Vs Solar Power – 2

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In many public forums, I talk very loudly about Solar Power vs Solar Energy. I am not meaning the technical difference between Power and Energy. I am talking about what the market and general public understand.  The moment we mention “solar” – because of widespread Government side subsidies and awareness programs worldwide, people connect it with “Solar Power”, generally meaning Solar Photovoltaic plants  (PV). But, we use energy in various forms – Light, Heat, motion, cooling, and so on.  The good news is:  Solar Power a.k.a Solar PV based solar electricity generation is a high quality energy – meaning it can be converted to many other energy forms efficiently without losing much of it. Does that mean that we should always go to the high quality of energy (electricity) and then convert it to low quality energy always? Conventional wisdom says, YES.  But, solar changes this. Solar heating – at low temperature is very efficient – at 80-90% efficiency compared to paltry 13-17% of solar PV.  Moreover, costs are 50% if we compare KW capacity to to KW capacity or – KWHr generation cost to KWHr generation cost. What does that mean? We should somehow change the perception and add “Solar Energy” (to mean all forms of energy – heat, light etc) to our vocabulary rather than just “Solar Power” (“to mean electricity”). ~Bhoo, CEO, Aspiration Energy

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