IMPACT OF RENEWABLE(DISTRIBUTED GENERATION) ENERGY IN POWER QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

       Long transmission is one of the main cause for electrical power loss. Even a high school kid may know this fact these days. But the power quality problem is not only due to these losses. Approximately 70 to 80% of all power quality problem can be attributed to faulty connections or wiring(a research says not me). Also some other things like harmonics, transients, electromagnetic interference and LPF(low power factor)also damage power quality but they all share the remaining 20-30% only. So we will worry about them later.

DISTRIBUTED GENERATING STATION

      Okay then, now how we are going to take care of the power quality problems due to long transmission power losses. Are we going to "lay superconductors instead of aluminium alloys and copper conductors?" or "increasing voltage level to extreme levels and implementing HVDC?". These things may happen(exclude that superconductor idea please), but with very large investment. This remedy measures also will look reasonable when we implement them for new long power transmission projects. Then what about the older lines staying out there wasting not only the power but also our money(for losses too we are paying the electricity boards).

       To resolve this problem we got to ask the help of renewable energy. The solar, wind, wave and some other power plants scattered all over a country can not only help us to meet the growing demands with depleting fossil fuels. They were like a bonus to us in resolving power quality problems. The irritating incidents like switching off of T.V's while watching a football game and shutting down of A.C in a hot day due to low voltage problems and faulty lines may end now. Integrating these scattered power houses(Distributed Generation) with the existing system surely can deliver us a good quality power. If a feeder from centralized generating station to your area encountered fault, don't worry you will still get power from a near by distributed generating station. For that we need to install solar, wind or whatever that suits to your geographic location.

But we got to be too careful while designing these integration of centralized system with distributed power generating system. Improper designing in power electronic devices may inject harmonics into the system which will further destroy the power quality instead of making it up.

DISTRIBUTED GENERATING STATION IMAGE SOURCE - http://www.performanceenergy.com

CURRENT(ELECTRICITY) FROM COW DUNG - REDUCE THE CARBON EMISSION UP TO 8%

        "Do you know the fact that the amount of methane released by the cow's around the world is almost than that emitted by the vehicles that uses fossil fuels(car, train, flights, etc) all around the world". Methane is the most dangerous greenhouse gas that traps the heat in our atmosphere as 20 times that of CO2. They remain in atmosphere for around 15 years. Now, there is a way for every one of us to reduce the carbon emission without spending a cent. Yeah, becoming a vegetarian is the solution but are we ready to be a vegetarian. "NO", i can hear the answer hidden inside most of you. Then how we could reduce the carbon emission. Just collect the cow dungs. 

        It is not a hard job i think so. As it will be a routine in a farm to collect the cow dung to keep the farm clean. Collecting the cow dung from the farms all around us is simple and low cost. This collected cow dung is then stored in a large tank where it is mixed with proper algae or fungi for the process of biological fermentation. In this part the micro-organisms take care of everything for the generation of electricity.

THOUSAND YEAR OLD METHOD OF TURNING
COW DUNG INTO FUEL

       Although in India cow dung is dried and used as one of the primary domestic fuel for the production of heat. The high carbon emission from directly burning them makes it risky and we cannot fully utilize the energy. At this time we are left with two choices. The first choice is turning into vegetarian which most of us don't even try. The second choice is supporting the bio plants or building one of our own. If we start utilizing the whole of the cow dung all around the world we can reduce the carbon emission by 8% which will be a great achievement.

TIDAL POWER - SO PROMISING FUTURE

             Got "Shocked", but not by electricity just by hearing the amount of electricity that can be generated by tidal energy as the source but with a huge investment(that may give shock to most of the investors). Why "TIDAL"? you may ask. Tidal energy sounds more interesting when we think of why we need to invest a huge amount of money for tidal and why not for other renewable's. There exists a big explanation for it.

     Tidal power generation has lot of disadvantages associated with it like High Initial Capital Investment, Limited Locations, It's Effect on Marine Life, Long Gestation Time, Difficulty in Transmission of Tidal Electricity, Weather Effects(storms and typhoons), etc. When considering advantages like No Fuel, Long Life, High Energy Density, High Load Factor attracts big investors(Siemens and Vatten fall) toward it and it's Predictable nature, Renewable, Non-Polluting and Carbon Negative gets the most of the governments attention towards it.

     The Danish government spent £1.3 billion to establish onshore wind, which currently brings £2.7bn per year in revenue. A properly capitalized wave and tidal sector could create 43,500 direct jobs and generate a potential £4.2bn per year in revenue for the  UK economy - a report says.

     

     Renewable UK’s State of the Wave and Tidal Industry report, released at the conference, states that the UK is still leading the world with the largest installed wave and tidal generating base of 2.4 MW, a further 27 MW with planning consent, 77.5 MW of projects in planning, and 700 MW expected in the Pentland Firth area by 2020.

     In total, Renewable UK forecasts 1-2 GW of wave and tidal energy installations in the UK by 2020. Then installing tidal power in India not only helps the unemployment problems out here but also can supply the uninterrupted power to the whole nation(in Tamil Nadu there is daily power cut for 3-5hrs and so on in other states may fade out) when we utilize the most of the tidal energy available here. Finally tidal power sounds so promising.

Light Energy(solar) Harvesting Using Fiber Optic Cables To Light the Buildings - Low Cost, Simple Technology

      

Fiber Optic Cable

 Bored of hearing "Switch off the lights when not in use"???. Now, a new technology came into scene to solve the problem of lighting the buildings during day time without using electricity. I know what you are thinking right now!!!. I'm for sure not going to say a word about "Photovoltaics" and let you feel bored.

     In current day scenario there are a lot of new technologies came around to generate electricity from non renewable energy sources, But most of them costs us much and can't be implemented by normal peoples who belong to low or middle class families. Not only cost matters, also the technology implemented in most of harvesting technologies are quite complex.

Building Implemented With
Fiber Optic Light Harvesting

Here it comes the Energy Harvesting via Fiber Optic cables, where we are using a mirror and lens arrangement to intensify and collect the light energy coming out from the sun. This collected light energy is then send into buildings through Fiber Optic cables. Now we got the lightings to our buildings at day time without spending much of our money.
There is an another advantage with which this technology binds with is: Using this technology we are providing natural sunlight to our buildings which eliminates the eye problems normally occur with peoples who works in artificial light. Also the sunlight is enriched with "Vitamin D" adds with advantage.
  

ORGANIC(But Not Green) vs INORGANIC ENERGY SOURCES

      

Advanced energy harvesting from solar using Photovoltaics

While i'm browsing about saving electricity last night, i accidentally seen a web page which says that "inorganic fuels are going to dominate the future". Suddenly an article i read about Organic fuels struck my mind and i recalled some informations from that article and i posted some of which i recalled.

       Sustainable, green, renewable, organic- the words are remembered so often while debating about energy and climate changes that they tend to sound as they were similar.But of course they don't."Nuclear reactors emit no carbon and are therefore in a sense green, but uranium is non-renewable"-this is what i read in that article but this can't be green in any sense as because they don't emit carbon. First of all we are using the word "GREEN" not only to represent energy sources that will never emit carbon into atmosphere, instead we are using this word to represent the energy sources which are not giving away any by-products that are harmful to environment.

Implementation of solar cells in a large scale

  
     Hydro power is green and renewable but may not always be sustainable; coal is inorganic but it's carbon emissions make it the very opposite of green.All that is obvious enough. But even so, it may be jarring to hear- as we have found and will describe that- organic biofuels can't possibly fuel a growing world economy in a sustainable manner, whereas, in principle, inorganic fuels could.
     Now we are entered into a biofuel boosted world and most of them were saying that biofuel is the future and already america started producing it in a huge quantity. Both the biofuel and carbon scenarios are carbon neutral by definition- solar for obvious reasons, biomass because carbon emitted is reabsorbed when plants regrow(biofuels are carbon free only if crops are planted on existing tilled fields).
     Biofuels provide around 6.5 megawatt hours per square kilometer, That's roughly enough to power 60 homes.The photovoltaic system covering the same square kilometer, with a typical commercially available system efficiency of 15.5%, could power up to 12,000 homes. Also, in cars which are powered by the internal combustion engines are replaced with electric vehicles that are three times as efficient-a direct result of losses in the thermal cycle of the combustion engine.
     There exists a lengthy list which describes the advantages of inorganic over organic and i don't have much time to post them all. Instead, I can say that "Forget biofuels- only inorganic energy sources can provide prosperity   for all and forever".