ABB India has developed a solar-powered water pump for irrigating crops with rural India facing problems in the supply of electricity and availability of diesel for operating gensets.
“ABB solar pump drive starts automatically when there is enough sunshine and the motor connected to it begins to run the pump to draw water. At sunset, the drive turns off the motor and the water flow ceases,” Vinod Raina, senior Vice President (Transformers division) at ABB India, told reporters here.
He said that the built-in maximum power point tracking functionality enables the pump to run at maximum power using the available solar energy.
He said that switching from use of conventional energy or diesel gensets to solar power can free up as much as 18 per cent of the electricity that can be used for other purposes.
“As much as 18 per cent of the total electrical energy generated goes into agriculture. There are nine million diesel pump-sets in India. Even if 50 per cent of these are converted to solar powered pumps, it will save 25 billion litres of diesel per year,” Raina said while claiming that the implementation of the solar pump can improve agricultural productivity to at least two crops a year in most parts of the country.
The unreliable electricity supply in rural areas, the ABB official said, resulted not only in wastage of energy but also of water.
“Due to the uncertain power supply, pumps are kept switched on waiting for electricity and, often unattended, lead to water being drawn out and wasted,” he said.
Raina said that with the government having set a target of deploying 1,00,000 solar pumpsets over the next five years, states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat are key adopters followed closely by Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
PTI

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BenQ Solar Presents World's Lightest Mono-Crystalline Module for the Japanese Market
With the demand for high performance and cost-efficient residential solar solutions on the rise, BenQ Solar, the leading solar solution brand of AU Optronics, announced today that it has developed the world's lightest 60-cell crystalline-silicon module for the Japanese residential market.
To specially address the Japanese market, BenQ Solar has developed lightweight solar solutions which include an ultra-light mono-crystalline module weighing only 10.5 kg (5.3 kg/sqm), with the maximum power output at 280W. The module is approximately 45% lighter than conventional counterparts, making it the world's lightest among all 60-cell crystalline-silicon modules. It is safe to be installed even on thin metal-sheet roofs, which effectively reduces the risk of collapsing if an earthquake strikes.

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Researchers in Norway have succeeded in getting bacteria to power a fuel cell. The "fuel" used is wastewater, and the products of the process are purified water droplets and electricity.

This is an environmentally-friendly process for the purification of water derived from industrial processes and suchlike. It also generates small amounts of electricity – in practice enough to drive a small fan, a sensor or a light-emitting diode.
In the future, the researchers hope to scale up this energy generation to enable the same energy to be used to power the water purification process, which commonly consists of many stages, often involving mechanical and energy-demanding decontamination steps at its outset.
Nature's own generator
The biological fuel cell is powered by entirely natural processes – with the help of living microorganisms.
"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water", explains SINTEF researcher Luis Cesar Colmenares, who is running the project together with his colleague Roman Netzer. "As they eat, the bacteria produce electrons and protons. The voltage that arises between these particles generates energy that we can exploit. Since the waste in the wastewater (organic material) is consumed and thus removed, the water itself becomes purified", he says.

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