Solar visions
Helping to save the planet by introducing India’s new affordable solar energy
innovations to the world
In cooperation with International Solar
Innovation Council, InSIC
India has, during the last twenty years, produced an amazing array of new kind of solar energy inventions. Among them are thermal storage solar cookers that can be used inside, after the sun has set, ultra-cheap solar-based food driers and solar space heaters which only cost USD 70 but can keep a middle-sized Himalayan house warm even in winter when the temperature drops to 15 degrees Celsius below zero.
The new Indian solar innovations include ways to combine agriculture and solar power in a manner that really benefit food production. Indian scientists and engineers have started to cover irrigation canals, lakes and ponds with solar panels to reduce the evaporation of water. They have developed the world’s first truly operating electrodynamic cleaning system for solar panels, making it possible to clean the panels very often without using water.
India has been a pioneer in developing the idea of second-generation pumped-storage hydropower, in converting the existing hydro-power plants and reservoirs to storages of solar and wind electricity. It has developed super-affordable solar-based water purification systems for rural schools and experimented with replacing the structural steel in solar power plants with bamboo, to make solar power carbon negative already in the construction phase. India has developed innovations that could accelerate the electric vehicle revolution, especially the breakthrough of small and middle-sized EVs.
New, extremely affordable solar technologies coming from India could play an important, if not decisive role in the fight against global warming. Besides this they can contribute to eliminate deep poverty and assist the world in reducing air pollution, which is currently causing nine million premature deaths per year.
Solar Visions is the first volume introducing all the new Indian solar innovations – many of which are likely to have major global importance – to the world.
The book has been produced in cooperation with InSIC, International Solar Innovations Council, and with InSIC’s large contact network of research institutes, universities, companies and non-governmental organizations developing new kinds of solar energy applications.
First two parts of the book present Indian solar energy innovations in a more general way. Third part consists of case studies, many of which include technical drawings, graphs and pictures which make it possible to develop further improved or locally adjusted versions of the Indian innovations in different parts of the world.
Editors of the book believe that the new Indian solar energy concepts and technologies have the potential to benefit billions of people directly, while also benefiting every one of us by helping to prevent disastrous global warming.
