Introduction to renewable energy and its technologies

By Priya Chetty on February 19, 2012

The renewable energy is the energy which comes from the natural resources such as rain, sunlight, wind, geothermal heat and tides are renewable [Agterberg, 1998]. In the year 2008 about 11%-19% of the global energy of the consumption comes from the renewable with the 13% of the energy coming from the biomass products that is used for heating the product and about 3.2% from the hydroelectricity is used for the consumption of energy.They share the renewable in the electricity generation is about18% in that the 15% is used for global electricity which is coming from hydroelectricity and about 3% is coming from new renewable. The New renewable sources such as the small hydro, wind, modern biomass, solar, biofuels and geothermal are based on 2.7% and they are growth is very rapid.

The Wind power is generating at a rate of 40% with a installed capacity of about 159 gigawatts in 2009 and it is mostly used in Asia, Europe and the United States [Ayuso Ortiz, 2002]. The Brazil which has the largest energy renewable programs in the worldwide is involved in the production of the ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and now the ethanol provides about 15% of the automotive fuel for energy. At the end of 2009 the cumulative global photovoltaic installations surpassed 21 gigawatt and the photovoltaic power stations are popular in and Spain and Germany [Blok, 2004].

Sometimes many of the energy renewable projects are small-scale and the renewable technologies are suited to the remote and rural areas where the energy is crucial in the human development. The Micro-hydro systems are configured into the county-scale or village-scale mini-grids which are served in many areas. It has been estimated that about 3 million households get the power from small solar photovoltaic systems. About more than 20 million rural households are getting the light and they are cooking from biogas which are made in household-scale digesters. The Biomass cook stoves are used by 150 million household persons across the world.

 

References

  • Agterberg, A. E. and Faaij, A. P. C., 1998. Bio-energy trade. Possibilities and constraints on short and longer
  • Ayuso Ortiz, J. R., Romero Zamora, J. J. and Garcia, V. O., 2002. Wind Energy in Spain. 2002 European Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition, Hamburg, Germany.
  • Blok, K., 2004. Renewable Energy Policies in the European Union – editorial. Energy Policy, Special Issue, in press.

 

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