Energy is a core essential need for living beings. Be it the food we consume is energy for us to live and thrive, or as fuel for cooking, for automobiles, generating electricity, etc., Energy is definitely a key essential need. Since the demand for energy is huge and very resource consuming, it is in the best interest of humankind to harvest it from a cleaner and renewable source to make it sustainable in the long run.
- Solar Energy - Thermal & Photo-Voltaic Technologies
- Wind Energy - Wind Generators / Mills
- Hydro Energy - Gravity-Flow & Wave-Energy based harvesting methods
- Geo-Thermal - Radio-active decay & core-formation energy of the planet.
:: Solar Energy ::
Sun is the core energy center for all forms of energy we know, and nothing can beat the efficiency of making use of it directly. Solar Energy is undoubtedly the best renewable energy resource that can be harvested. The only issue with Solar Energy would be its absence during night hours.
Solar Thermal
Making use of the thermal energy received from the Sun is the most efficient way to harness the received Solar Energy. Solar Water Heaters are the best example and they are more than 80% efficient to harvest heat directly for useful purposes.
Solar Photo-Voltaic
Certain materials when exposed to Sunlight produce electric current, for example, certain Silicon compounds produce electricity that could be made useful, and it is this basic technology that is used in Solar Photo-Voltaic (Solar PV) modules/panels to harvest electrical energy. Though the electrical efficiency is only around 15-25 % of the light energy that hits the module, the cost of the modules being cheaper makes it a viable method that is been used worldwide.
Solar PV technology is used to power up various electrical devices from devices as tiny as pocket calculators which need less than a Watt to work, to Giga-Watt utility-scale Solar Power Farms to power up an entire city. This makes Solar PV the best renewable technology to adopt in present times for producing Renewable Energy practically for almost every application known to us.
Since electricity is the most versatile form of energy that can be easily transmitted with minimal loss across all landscapes, Solar PV gained more momentum in the last few decades, which otherwise would have been lost to Solar Thermal because of the efficiency factor.
Below are four of the most popular methods of implementation of Solar PV as a source of electricity.
- Solar PV is used to produce electricity to use as much as needed, and store the excess energy produced in storage systems such as Batteries for later use when demand is high or when the production is less/absent (eg. night-time). This is popularly known as a Battery-backed / Off-grid Solar Solution.
- In a second method, excess energy can be exported to the Electrical-Grid for others to make use of it and then draw it when required thereby paying only for the net difference of energy transactions, this method also eliminates the batteries & their cost. This is the popular method also popularly known as the On-Grid Net-Metering Solar PV system. In recent times, this has become more viable and is used for all sizes & scales of installations, as this Solar PV solution is simpler, cost-effective, and very economical to own and operate.
- The third method is a combination of the above two solutions into one, popularly known as the Hybrid method, where the system has a battery bank for local storage for usage during power outages & less/nil-Sunlight times and also export/import excess/demand like with On-Grid method.
- Agro-Solar-PV (popularly known as Agro-Voltaic or Agri-Voltaic) is another typical Solar PV system used to generate electricity on top of agricultural land, the power generated is usually used to pump water for irrigation or/and also to export excess to the Grid as a producer. This is used in different methods, again as standalone without export as well as bi-directional energy transactions. Agro-Voltaic is gaining traction off-late as the land use is beneficial for both agriculture as well as for producing electricity, thereby not wasting landmass for only one purpose. We are proud to say, we are one of the early pioneers in this type of method/technology as we also specialize in agriculture with our venture into Farmicle.
