The quarterly shows insolation data for five different towns/cities across India. They customized the graphs from a column graph (default) to a line graph and adjusted the colors to match their color palette. Below is an example of one of such graphs.

The report uses customized graphs generated by the Solar Resource Tool

BRIDGE TO INDIA is a consulting company based in New Delhi. Founded by Dr. Tobias Engelmeier in 2008, the company focuses on environmental technologies in the Indian Market. You can contact Mr. Mohit Anand regarding the India Solar Compass publication by email: mohit (dot) anand(at) bridgetoindia.com

The Solar India Project has taken a step in the right direction with the release of the Solar Resource Tool. I have designed and developed an Excel based tool that was promised in this post, not too long ago.

Overview

The Solar India Project: Solar Resource Tool (SRT) is an easy-to-use, visualization tool for solar radiation for any location in India. Think of this tool as a front end, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to the NREL developed hourly solar insolation data for India.   As mentioned in this post, NREL allows you to download hourly dataset for a given location. This data is large and needs some level of post- processing to get the results you want. This is where the Solar Resource Tool comes in handy, it does the dirty work for you and outputs good-looking graphs showing monthly  profiles of diffuse and direct components. These graphs can be copy/pasted into any of your reports or presentations.

Getting Started

To get started with the Solar Resource Tool:

1. Get it: Download the Zip/rar file from the ‘flash widget’ on the right  >>
2. Give me your feedback in the comments section below

Requirements

1. A computer
2. Microsoft^® Excel^® version 2007
3. Internet connectivity to download the data
4. WinZip® / WinRaR

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions regarding the Solar Resource Tool.

Is the Solar Resource Tool free?
It is! You can download the Excel file and use it.  Please refer to the Disclaimer that appears on first starting the application for more information on terms of use.

How long will the SRT be available to download and use?

Always I might occasionally revise and upload newer versions, but you will be able to download it at anytime.

Who is SRT intended to be used by?
I think SRT is a great tool for students, architects, engineers and solar industry professionals to use in the early project and discussion stages. But really, anyone interested in solar insolation data and applications is welcome to download and try it out.

How is SRT related to The Solar India Project?
SRT is a part of The Solar India Project which aims at creating a one-stop shop collection of database and tools to promote information sharing and knowledge on solar availability and applications for anyone interested in the field.

How can I give feedback to the SRT team?
I definitely want to hear from you! Send me an email at pallavi.mantha at gmail dot com or leave a comment below.

How can I share images/graphs with others?
Easy, since this tool is Excel based, you can use commands like copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) into any other application or print to pdf or a printer.

Upcoming Improvements

• Daily and Hourly profiles
• Calculate PV and SHW generation based on user input system specifications
• Look-up solar installers near the location you select

Another recently popular field of study is Biomimicry. As the name suggests, it is a process of mimicking nature. Applied to design, it presents endless possibilities of creative solutions that have been tried and tested by nature. If biophilic design aims at connecting humans to nature, biomimicry aims at translating nature’s design solutions to our problems.

I recently made a trip to the New York Botanical Garden. This trip fulfilled both my longing to be surrounded by nature and exposed me to a myriad of design ideas. Considering New York is still bang in the middle of winter, I was very very happy to get out of the cold (read: -10C/14F) and enter a warm and humid (read: 21C/70F) tropical greenhouse.  The exhibit was a display of Caribbean trees and plants, and all it took for me to trek all the way to Bronx on a chilly day was a brochure with a color photo of a flower on it.

Not sure if this happens to anyone else out there, but when I’m surrounded by beautiful design, my mind goes for a toss. I lose it, literally, and this trip was no exception. I was jumping up and down in excitement, swooning over little leaves and flowers and taking loads of photographs. I let my imagination go wild and this somehow lead to a little game that my husband and I played called ‘what (else) can you see?’ . We had a lot of fun with this game so I wanted to post a few of my favorite photos from this trip and play the game with you.. Are you ready???

P.S: All photos were taken with an IPhone camera (Did I tell you I lost my camera???!! ) To see all the photos I took on this trip, check out the Flickr photo stream to the right >>>

Hanging Skyscrapers

One of my most favorite plants. For the curious, it is called Ceratostema Rauhii, Ericaceae, Peru.

What I see: Each of the leaf is a unit with a central service core. Private activities in the overlapping areas. Water that trickles over each ‘unit’ is collected and used for service and domestic purposes.

What else: ready made leaf garlands

Satellite docking station

What I see:  Round satellites, disc shaped docking stations, elongated service core and white antennas

Wild Beauty

What I see:   Such beautiful color palette. Almost seems surreal an out of this world! I don’t think i want /can see it as anything more right now… to awed by it

The Wise One

What I see: An aged and wise Star Wars character. Beautiful, beautiful grayish-blue. Would love to make a dress inspired by this color and texture palette.

Predator’s Hair

What I see: Same as the title; Also see it being a prototype for a optic cables or fuel lines….

Large Scale: A city within a city

Small Scale: Cruise ship decks

What I see: First I saw a huge city; each petal is a city and all the petals combine to make a mega city. Imagine the ‘cup’ of the petal filled with layers and layers of floors and the underside covered with little windows…

What else: Cruise ship decks with flight landing on top of each petal..

What (else) do you see??

Post a comment and tell me

Ciao!

The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in cooperation with India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), through funding from the U.S. Department of Energy(DOE) recently released solar maps for India; Now this is very exciting news considering the timing of the Solar India Project. I was ecstatic to find that they have made GIS data public which was not the case before. Up until now we have had only low resolution static maps to work with, but now with GIS data and high-resolution solar maps, one can extrapolate information for specific states and cities from this larger dataset.

The new dataset contains high-resolution solar resource maps and data for India. The high-resolution (10-km) solar resource data was developed using weather satellite data incorporated into a site-time specific solar mapping approach developed at the U.S. State University of New York at Albany. The data were output as data in geographic information system (GIS) format and as static maps.

The dataset includes monthly and annual direct normal irradiance (DNI) and global horizontal irradiance (GHI) maps. These maps were developed from hourly data spanning January 2002 to December 2008 generated through application of the SUNY satellite to irradiance model.

In English, it means that these maps show direct (normal) incident, diffuse (horizontal) and global (direct+diffuse) horizontal radiation data in Watt-hour per square meter (wh/m2). This data is also adjusted for the time zone difference (+5.5 GMT). I love the fact that you can download hourly data in a .csv format. You do this by typing in the longitude and latitude for the location of your choice. I downloaded data for my home town Hyderabad by typing in the geographical location: 17.366 N and 78.476 E and the closest cell of data available was 17.35 N and 78.45 E – pretty close eh!

The downloaded file has data for both un-shifted time and shifted time (i.e, applying the time zone difference). I created daily averages from the hourly data along with averages (Figure 1).

Obviously, from the solar applications perspective, it makes more sense to see the data for each month. So I calculated the monthly and annual average data (figure 2 and 3 below). The dashed lines indicate annual averages. So, Hyderabad receives 140  and 55 kWh/m2 direct and diffuse radiation respectively. It receives approximately 5 kWh/m2/day annual global incident radiation.

Hyderabad Solar Data
Source: NREL

Coming soon: A tool that can calculate the incident radiation at any given point in India!

I’m excited about this tool! I will post it as soon as it is complete, so look forward to it!

Until then,

P

Links:

http://www.nrel.gov/international/ra_india.html

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/new_data/India/

Making resolutions is not something I usually do but this year I’ve decided to make one:  blog at least 2 posts every month. This means that by the end of 2011, I should have 24 posts at a minimum. This sounds easy, but let’s see how this one goes!

Have you ever run into information dead-end on the web while researching certain ‘green’ topics or sustainable initiatives in India? I know it is limiting to just stick with the WWW but it’s the first place we tend to look, especially if you are living outside of India. Most times, I find bits and pieces of information that are hard to glue together and also missing crucial sections needed to complete the puzzle.

Solar applications in India:

Recently, I’ve been researching solar thermal / solar hot water (SHW) and the photovoltaic (PV) scene in India. I’ve been looking for installed capacity, generation, costs, incentives available, and barriers to adoption. What I’ve found are pieces of information like lists of manufacturers/ installers (not many have websites), news articles and a few technical reports, but no comprehensive source of information. This led me to wonder what I could do to remedy this situation.

The proposal:

My idea is to create PV and SHW maps for India. These maps will show an array of information based on location ranging from installed capacities to incentives available to solar insolation. These maps will also allow us to chart current and future trends while identifying underserved or booming states and building sectors. The maps will be interactive and users will be able to select a particular installed system and read about the project profile. The idea is to roll out SHW maps in the first phase and then move on to PV maps in the second phase. These maps will be tied to a database containing the following information:

• Address
• Building type:  residential, institutional, commercial etc.
• Available solar insolation
• Installed capacity
• Type of collector
• Size of the system
• Cost (before incentives)
• Date installed
• Installer information
• Manufacturer information
• Availed incentives/subsidies (incl. bank loans)

Additionally, ‘Incentive maps’ will be created, these maps, as the name suggests, show incentives/subsidies by city and state. Selecting a state would list all the incentives/rebates, loans offered for solar applications.

Tools:

• Microsoft Access for the database creation
• Geographical Information System (GIS) for the mapping part

Data sources:

• Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE)
• Solar Thermal Federation of India (STFI)
• GRIHA India
• Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE)
• PV and SHW  installers, manufacturers and dealers in India

Data submission and validation:

The community can submit data through a web-based form. Duplication and validation are two most critical steps in creating a good database. Here is one way of doing it. If you have any ideas of how this can be dealt with, please get in touch with me.

Interested?

Interested in working on this project? Leave a comment and I will get in touch you.

Pallavi Mantha

National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) recently released the ‘Open PV Project’ which is basically a database of PV installations in US. It tracks number of PV systems installed by zip code, county and state, cost of the project before incentives and amount of power each system produces. I really love the fact that it is an open source mapping project and invites contributors from the community to add their installed systems to this database. Engaging the community and sharing the task is key to creating such a database.

Trends: (based on installations in the Open PV database):

Trends show that PV gained momentum in the US only in the last 3-4 years. Reasons for this can be attributed to the decrease in cost of installation from $11/W in 1998 to $7-$8/W in 2010 and the increase in the number of state and federal incentives.

It is no surprise to see California leading the country in the number of installations to date. It is also evident from the stats that  4-10kW systems are the most commonly installed sizes accounting to 46% of the total followed by 2-4kW systems at 38%  indicating that residential PV systems are at the forefront of the market.

A note on Visualization :

This is a great example for visualization, the dashboard is kept simple and easy to follow. The map colors makes it easy to identify states with highest PV installations vs. states with no PV installations. Though it takes more effort to read the rotated vertical axis titles on the line and bar graphs as they are rotated to face away from the graph. Hopefully they turn it around.

My Wishlist:

I would like to see a similar dashboard to track solar hot water (SHW) systems. It is cheaper and efficient to install SHW’s than PVs and typically most residences install a SHW system before sizing and installing a PV system.

I think it makes sense to add another category : building type. I would love to see how much of the installed PV is on residences vs. commercial or institutional or parking lots etc.. This way, we can pin point opportunities in under-served building sectors and  also chart trends for the same.

Links:

http://openpv.nrel.gov/

http://openpv.nrel.gov/visualization/index

http://openpv.nrel.gov/contributors/index

Each of these events shaped the colors, size and design of the portfolio. Looking back, my strongest folio was the one I made after I got laid off – though those were terrible tension filled times, the design of the folio portrayed something else: it was simple, clutter free, to the point and conveyed my work at its best. Even today I wonder if getting laid off was a good thing after all – obviously wasn’t in financial terms but it did gave me a chance to look back and see what I had achieved so far and where I wanted to go from there…

Back to portfolios,  I noticed a trend in my folio designs: their size gets smaller and smaller… me likes! saves paper and less ink needed. My latest folio is 6″ x 6″ (the one with the black n white cover)

This will be my last one though: no more print folios, I plan to create an online portfolio and carry a laptop to interviews in the future. Best way to save ink and paper.

Click here to read the ‘Mapping Dubai‘ post

These are a series of research based maps created in 2008 on the (un)sustainable practices in Dubai.

The first map is called ‘Population Growth: Stratified Diversity’. It tries to capture 3 things: Dubai’s growth timeline with major events, growth in population and the diversity of the population.  Only 12% of Dubai’s population are natives and 50% are South Asians who come to Dubai seeking jobs.

Here is a zoom in on the icons:

The second map is related to the construction boom in Dubai that caused it to expand in all directions. It is titled ‘Expanding Boundaries’ . This map shows the lateral, vertical and prosthetic expansion over time.

Map 3 ‘Scra(m)bbled Growth‘ addresses growth from the ’cause and effect’ perspective. It is one of my favorites. Though I love the idea, I feel I could do a better job with the choice of fonts and kerning. It is on my to-do list and will post a revised version when I get it done.

Map 4 ‘Dredging: Abusing the Environment?’ addresses the topic of dredging. A tetris inspired map that shows the effects of creating artificial islands like the World islands and the Palms. With 185 million tons of sand and 7 million tons of rock dumped into the water to build the Palm Jumeirah, 13 million sq. feet of coral was killed, many fish and smaller organisms were either displaced or killed.

Map 5 is titled ‘Quenching the Green Desert Thirst’ . As is evident from the title, the map shows Dubai’s water consumption. A 62% increase in desalinized water consumption was seen in 4 years from 2002 -06.  By 2020, 70% of Dubai’s water consumption will be from desalinized water, of which 85% is used for irrigation and greening.

The last map titled ‘ Growing cities, Growing problems’ compares Dubai and Las Vegas to Pearl River Delta (PRD) in China. Though at first it may seem like an unfair comparison, considering PRD is a region and not a city, it is quickly evident that Dubai’s water and ecological footprint is almost 80% of PRD’s while it is 1/8th the size of PRD.

More here: http://www.cmu.edu/architecture/academics/courses/mappingurbanism/Dubai/student-work.html

© Pallavi Mantha, 2008