Abstract
It is well known that the rampant increase for the demand of electricity and rapid depletion of the fossil fuels has called for immediate response in the direction of energy sufficiency. To accomplish this, one of the important tasks is to identify the locations of high potential for renewable energy generation. It is a well-established fact that solar energy proved to be the most sought after source for energy generation. Although, solar energy potential maps of India have been prepared based on solar irradiation maps in the earlier studies, the present research study has been carried out with a focused attention directly on solar energy generation considering various parameters. In this work it is shown that solar energy generation does not depend on solar radiation alone at a location. Instead, there are various other factors that influence the energy generation. Some of them are ambient temperature, wind velocity and other parameters like weather and topographic conditions. In this study the locations with high and low solar energy generation potential in India have been identified through systematic analysis by computing the solar energy parameters at every grid point (1° × 1°). The work has been extended with more detailed study for Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and the newly formed Telangana states. The data points considered for the states are 0.25° × 0.25° having resulted in adding more number of locations. Our results indicate that the total annual energy generation in India varies from 510,000 KWH to 800,000 KWH per acre of land. The least energy generation location pertains to the eastern parts of Arunachal Pradesh and eastern part of Assam and the highest annual solar energy generation has been identified in the eastern parts of Jammu & Kashmir and eastern part of Uttarakhand.
Highlights
Solar energy incident on the Earth’s surface known as insolation, is dependent on many parameters such as geographic location, earth-sun movements, tilt of earth’s rotational axis, atmospheric parameters, suspended particles etc
Results derived in our present study are solar energy generation at every location for each month and the total energy for the year
The highest annual solar energy generation (750,000 - 800,000 KWH/acre) potential has been identified in the eastern parts of Jammu & Kashmir and eastern part of Uttarakhand
Summary
Solar energy incident on the Earth’s surface known as insolation, is dependent on many parameters such as geographic location, earth-sun movements, tilt of earth’s rotational axis, atmospheric parameters, suspended particles etc. The daily global radiation on an average is around 5 KWH per square meter per day and in a year the sunshine ranges from 2300 to 3200 hours [2]. Another advantage is that India lies in an ideal geographical location between the equator and tropic of cancer and has an average annual temperature ranging from 25 ̊C to 27.5 ̊C. All these advantages can be effectively and strategically used if we can identify the locations of high potential solar energy generation. This helps to achieve the target of Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission which is 20 GW power by the year 2022 [3]
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