A lot has been said about how we impact the environment and how the environment impacts us, however a few salient points need to be noted, for one, renewables doesn't necessary mean electricity, it means cooking fuel, it means driving fuel and it constitutes heating fuel apart from electricity. It is easy to be lead by the lobby that believes that only if generated electricity is received is renewables useful, energy is not MW or GW, it is MWhrs and GWhrs. I have been talking about rooftop systems for a while now without touching on the other aspects of renewables, for instance biogas and biomass. This is a segment that is really huge and getting bigger in the South East Asian countries.
In 2005, China had no talk of Biomass and Biogas, in 2008 they revised their targets and the first Bio Energy conference was held there. Basically China has been seeing opportunities and then coming up with strategies to target respective markets. In India we tend to think small, we think of building small Biogas Plants for house instead of ramping up and building Community Bio-gas and Biomass plants. For centuries, we have had biogas plants that run small houses. In 2011, China decided to revise it strategies, it decided to target 20000MW biomass and 44 billion cubic feet bio-gas for 2020. That is a huge target and so how did they reach that target. The target was reached using a benchmark for bio-gas that being imported Australian coal and another being biomass v/s imported LPG.
If we use relevant benchmarks for relevant existing technologies then there is a fair chance of renewables making it to the best of the best. The only way to improve visibility of renewables is to used them against benchmarks and I think imported coal and imported LPG are correct benchmarks for the same. Biomass's produces electricity and continuous energy at not Rs 7 / unit but at Rs 2 / unit, remember that a unit is1 KW hrs. So, key factors for biomass power plants :
1. Availability and Price Fluctuation.
2. Logistics
3. Fuel handling
4. Tariff
5. Government Regulation
6. Technical Issues.
Biomass requires growing and careful cultivation of trees and then burning them to get electricity. A 200 acre Bamboo plantation can feed a 1MW plant, if we use agriculture waste as source then it requires 10000 acres while eucalyptus or cashew trees require up to 1000 acres to generate 1 MW.
Burning trees to get energy, not a good idea unless the ash content is low.
In 2005, China had no talk of Biomass and Biogas, in 2008 they revised their targets and the first Bio Energy conference was held there. Basically China has been seeing opportunities and then coming up with strategies to target respective markets. In India we tend to think small, we think of building small Biogas Plants for house instead of ramping up and building Community Bio-gas and Biomass plants. For centuries, we have had biogas plants that run small houses. In 2011, China decided to revise it strategies, it decided to target 20000MW biomass and 44 billion cubic feet bio-gas for 2020. That is a huge target and so how did they reach that target. The target was reached using a benchmark for bio-gas that being imported Australian coal and another being biomass v/s imported LPG.
If we use relevant benchmarks for relevant existing technologies then there is a fair chance of renewables making it to the best of the best. The only way to improve visibility of renewables is to used them against benchmarks and I think imported coal and imported LPG are correct benchmarks for the same. Biomass's produces electricity and continuous energy at not Rs 7 / unit but at Rs 2 / unit, remember that a unit is1 KW hrs. So, key factors for biomass power plants :
1. Availability and Price Fluctuation.
2. Logistics
3. Fuel handling
4. Tariff
5. Government Regulation
6. Technical Issues.
Biomass requires growing and careful cultivation of trees and then burning them to get electricity. A 200 acre Bamboo plantation can feed a 1MW plant, if we use agriculture waste as source then it requires 10000 acres while eucalyptus or cashew trees require up to 1000 acres to generate 1 MW.
Burning trees to get energy, not a good idea unless the ash content is low.
0 comments:
Post a Comment