SOLAR
ENERGY- FUTURE OF
HUMANITY AND KEY TO
NEPAL’S PROSPERITY
From the beginning of our
civilization, the sun has been the center of attraction among all the
observable cosmological bodies. The simple reason behind our
curiosity about the sun is that it is the shiniest object in our sky.
In a period of many centuries, from Copernican heliocentrism to
Keppler’s planetary motion postulates and from Newton’s law of
gravitation to general theory of relativity, our knowledge about sun
and its motion became better and more accurate. Advancement of high
resolution telescopes enabled us to observe different phenomena
occurring on sun’s surface; Nuclear Physics guided us to know how
energy is produced in its core; nevertheless, in my point of view,
quantum theory of light brought a revolutionary change in our
thinking about the sun. Before this theory, we just considered the
sun as a source of heat and light which it gives us in the form of
electromagnetic radiations, but this theory made us realize “No!,
the sun is much more than being a prerequisite for life to sustain on
our planet; it is an ultimate source for all kinds of energy.”
According to the quantum theory, light ,we get from the sun, is
quantized; it comes in small packets of energy called photons.
Photons can excite an electron to a higher energy level and those
excited electrons can be knocked out of the atomic lattice if
provided sufficient amount of energy. This phenomena became the
fundamental of a new kind of source of energy- Solar energy.
From the day the current
electricity have been invented, its applications in every sector of
the society have increased at tremendous rates. We have been doing a
lot of research on just making the turbines move so that electricity
is produced. We have tried everything we have around – coal
(thermal) , rivers (hydroelectricity), hot springs( geothermal
energy), sea (tidal energy), and radioactive elements (nuclear
energy)- to produce electricity but none of them produces electric
current directly like solar panels. Basically, solar panels are the
clusters of photovoltaic cells. Different kinds of phtotvoltaic
cells( PV Cells) – mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline
silicon(first generation solar cells); Thin film based (second
generation solar cells); organic , quantum dots, and perovskite
(third generation solar cells) – are available at present.
Photovoltaic cells have different layers of n-type and p-type
semiconductors. Photons having equal or higher energy than the band
gap maintained between the layers of semiconductors excite the
electrons in the valence band to conduction band creating
electron-hole pairs. Because of forward biasing, the majority charges
(electrons in in the n- type semiconductors and holes in p-type
semiconductors) flow vigorously producing direct electric current
between the electrodes. The inverter is used to convert the direct
current into alternating current. The simple demonstration of forward
biasing is shown in figure-1.0.
Figure-1.0
As sooner we arrived in 21st
century, scientists started to apprehend that the sources of
energy we were using would be insufficient to accomplish the goals of
the future: the goal to make the world coal and petroleum free, the
goal to protect our earth and its biodiversity from global warming,
and the goal to provide energy to everyone at affordable prices. An
alternative of those sources was required to achieve these objectives
and thus the market of solar panels started to incline exponentially.
By the end of 2016, we had already had installed solar panels with a
total capacity of 303 gigawatts. Because of the substantial
investment in solar panels manufacturing, the price per watt for
solar panels has decreased significantly. Today, the cost of solar
power is approximately 0.25 dollars per watt.
Figure
2.0
Though, solar energy
contributed only 1.3 percent of the global energy demand in 2016, it
received the highest growth among all the energy resources. The
figure 3.0 clearly implies that the world is looking forward to
increase solar energy output in coming years. We have generally two
distinctive ways to effectuate the target - financial and scientific.
The first one is about promoting capital in solar energy. The
present governments of many nations are providing subsidies as well
as focusing on policies that encourage private sector to invest in
solar energy. Easing the land acquisition for solar fields, promoting
rooftop solar panels at local level, and sanctioning loans at lower
interest rates are the part of economic prospect of fostering solar
energy.
Figure-3
The other mechanism is to
increase the efficiency of the solar panels so that we can get more
yield consuming less number of solar panels and area of land, and
reducing the labor demand and the cost of maintenance. Today, first
generation solar cells are dominating the market of solar cells
especially the poly-crystalline cells due to its cheaper rates, but
it has only 13% efficiency in average. The scientists today are
making efforts to produce third generation solar cells with
efficiency above 40%. The problem with silicon solar cells is that is
has only one and fixed band gap( energy gap between two layers of
silicon); therefore, photons of only one wavelength excite the
electrons and more than a half of the power of the light is wasted as
heat. This heat also leads to extra wastage through black body
radiation. In, multi-junction solar cells, multiple band gaps are
available such that negligible portion of the incident light is
wasted. Other different methods to increase solar panel efficiency
are radiative cooling, anti-reflective coating, and minimizing
shading of solar panels. Advance researches are going on around the
world to make the third generation solar cells cheaper and more
efficient in producing energy than their conventional counterparts.
Let’s come to the second
topic of the discussion- Nepal’s prosperity. Everyone is familiar
with the fact that Nepal’s progress has not been able to complement
Nepal’s potential. The biggest reason I can say is inability of our
country to explore its resources and promote science and technology.
If the amount of money we expend on importing goods every year is
invested on substituting the old-fashioned methods we are still using
in manufacturing, energy and agriculture with advance techniques and
machinery, we won’t need to wait for decades to see our country
having a trade surplus rather than a trade deficit of billions of
rupees as seen in the present circumstances.
Talking about the current
scientific energy production in Nepal, I can only think about the
hydro power. From primary school, we are habituated to discuss about
the number “83,000 MW” capacity of hydroelectricity which in
reality is nothing more than a rumor. Neither the government nor
people of Nepal actually ever focused on the fact that Nepal is
located in a subtropical region as well as on a high altitude, and it
receives average radiation of 4.7Kwh per square metre per day. A
large hydroelectricity can make us reach few hundreds of megawatts of
electricity, but provided that we are able to set up large solar
fields with high-efficient solar panels and connect them to national
grid ( high-voltage electricity connection of a nation), we can
produce energy in gigawatts. According to Dr. Govinda Raj Pokhrel (ex-Executive Director of Alternative Energy Promotion Center(AEPC)), we
can produce 2920 Gwh of energy per year just by using 0.01% land of
Nepal for solar panels. Employing the costless power of the sun
through solar panels, we also can get rid of the possible adverse
effects of hydro power – degradation of aquatic ecosystem, increase
in probability of catastrophic events like soil erosion and flood,
emission of carbon dioxide and methane, and displacement of hundreds
of people. Moreover, installation of rooftop solar panels can play a
critical role in promotion of small-scale industries in rural areas
of Nepal.
The government with overhyped
proudness recently declared Nepal a “load shedding” free
country,” but I am acutely unsatisfied with this announcement . The
contention of the government officials that we are not facing a power
cut because we are producing huge amount of energy is unquestionably
false; the factual thing is we don’t have enough assets to have a
big demand of energy. Still, around 60% of Nepalese households are
dependent on forest wood and dung for cooking. In 2016, Nepal
imported petroleum products worth 566 million US dollars for running
transportation. Lighting a bulb at home and moving an fan can not be
called absolute electrification. Our country will be a electrified
country when it will be a gasoline and smoke free country which will
only happen when every industry, every vehicle and every house in
Nepal will completely operate on green electricity.
The figure 4.0 clearly shows
that about Nepal is heavily dependent on conventional resources,
whereas figure 5.0 demonstrates that we consume very less amount of
energy in comparison to other countries in Asia. This is a proof that
our industrial, agriculture and business sectors are still in
inferior stage. The same survey says that 80% of energy in Nepal is
consumed by households which again authenticate the very conclusion.
Figure-4.0- Different energy resources and their proportion in energy consumption in Nepal
Figure-5.0
Now, the question arises that whether solar
energy can change the current picture of energy in Nepal or not. The
answer is a big “Yes.” The success of projects like National
Rural and Renewable Energy Program (NRREP) and Karnali Ujyalo are the
proofs of my argument. These projects not only made thousands of
people in rural areas of Nepal self-dependent in energy but also had
an positive impact on their socioeconomic lives providing them the
basic infrastructures to expand their occupation.
l 
Figure 6.0- Solar energy contribution to total energy demand in different districts of Nepal
The figure-6.0
undoubtedly showcases
that the rural
districts are ranked at the top among all the districts in solar
energy contribution to the total energy demand of a district. This is
the achievement of the projects mentioned above. There is still a big
space of extension in the field of solar energy in Nepal. We have to
walk
on the path on which our our neighboring countries – India and
China, which were on first and sixth position respectively in 2016
on the basis of capacity of their solar power output – have been
walking. In
2015, Nepal and the World Bank signed an agreement to invest USD 130
million to develop a 25 MW solar project that will eventually be
connected to the national grid. It is the largest renewable energy
plant planned in the country.
Many projects like this
are
needed to be initiated in Nepal in coming years.
Figure-7.0 Use of solar panels in a school in a rural area of Nepal
Recently, Nepal Electricity
Association came with an brilliant idea: to buy the surplus
electricity produced by
solar panels of households and commercial sector and
add them to the national grid. Because very few of them produce solar
energy equal to their necessity or even less, this project has not
been as fruitful as it was expected at
the beginning. This shows that it is not true we do not have creative
ideas like people of developed countries. We just lack the policy,
technology and mindset to implement them. In our nation, people still
have a thought process that science and technology is a stuff for
extremely educated and trained personnel. We need to soon realize
that the revolution in energy through solar power is only possible
when the private sector and
the educational institutions coordinate
with the government. As per my observations, education sector in
Nepal is utterly passive when it comes to subscribing to nation’s
prosperity. In contrary, the universities and colleges of developed
countries energetically assist their governments by researching on
new outlooks
of science, innovating new technologies, and helping
their
governments
in policy making on the basis of the conclusions of their studies.
Universities of Nepal also
have to play a critical role in
guiding
government institutions like AEPC (Alternative
Energy Promotion Center)
to foster solar energy in Nepal along with the alignment of
international agencies like UNDP, World bank, and ADB.
Overall, a common inference
that comes up with all the statistics, quotes, and logical reasonings
presented above is: Solar energy is our future because it is
associated to quantum mechanics which is the most exhilarating field
of modern science having the greatest probability of discovering new
things. Nepal also have to flow with the current of this modern
science to find itself as a playmaker in place of just a spectator in
the game of development.
Reference:
www.aepc.gov.np
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell
IEA Report 2016
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/npl/
Economic Survey 2014/2015
www.worlbank.org
Journal of the Institute of Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 95–106 "Solar Energy Potential in Nepal and Global Context
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