Page 352 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Ener gy Pr oduction Industries 327

FIGURE 18.4 Potential routes for conversion of waste biomass into energy.

• Solar energy for rural villagers. Tata BP Solar, a joint venture
of Tata Power and BP Solar, has supplied solar energy sys-
tems to more than 7 million people in the province of Uttar
Pradesh, India, for applications such as village lighting, water
pumping, and telecommunications. Grid power is unavail-
able for most villages in this region, but Indian banks are
offering easy finance schemes that enable villagers to procure
solar-home-lighting systems at affordable prices.
• Solar thermal power. Unlike solar photovoltaic technology,
solar thermal simply concentrates the sun’s radiation to power
steam turbines. An Australian firm called WorleyParsons is
developing the world’s largest solar thermal plant, to be com-
pleted by 2011; it will deliver 250 megawatts, enough to power
the equivalent of 100,000 houses. Another Australian com-
pany, Ausra, is creating the manufacturing infrastructure for a
177-megawatt solar thermal power plant in California.
• Large-scale wind turbines. As investments increase in wind
energy generation, the size and sophistication of wind tur-
bines is growing, including offshore turbines tethered to the
ocean floor and advanced technologies for wind power stor-
age. As of 2008, the world’s largest wind turbine was the
Enercon E-126, with a rotor diameter of 126 meters (see Fig-
ure 18.5). Located in Emden, Germany, it is expected to pro-
duce more than 7 megawatts, enough to power about 5,000
households in Europe.