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The Covid-19 induced lockdown seems to have had an unexpected outcome — an increase in solar production in urban areas. Many cities around the world, including Delhi, witnessed a drastic reduction in air-pollution levels with the majority of industrial units temporarily shutting down and vehicles staying off the road during the lockdown.
An international team of researchers has found that cleaner air has led to more sunlight reaching solar panels, resulting in production of more clean energy. The study by researchers from Germany and the US appeared in the journal Joule last Friday.
“Reduced air pollution due to the lockdown really increased the amount of sunlight received by solar panels. We quantified this amount for Delhi to be 8 per cent and 6 per cent increases for late March and April, respectively,” said Ian Marius Peters of Helmholtz-Institut Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energies in Germany, who is the first author of the study.
Peters and his colleagues have previously been studying how haze and air pollution influence how much sunlight reaches the ground and the effect of air pollution on the output of solar panels, in different cities, including Delhi. Using a photovoltaic system installed in Paschim Vihar in West Delhi, which they used for their study earlier too, they measured the amount of solar radiation reaching the solar panel (called the level of insolation) before and after the shutdown.
Level of insolation
Insolation is measured with a pyranometer, an instrument that determines the solar radiation flux density from the hemisphere within a given range of wavelengths. Using data from some of their previous studies, the researchers calculated the changes in insolation.
They found that in late March, the amount of sunlight reaching the solar panels in Delhi increased about 8 per cent, compared with data from the same dates from 2017 to 2019. The insolation at noon increased from about 880 Watt/sqm to about 950 W/sqm. Information on air quality and particulate matter suggested that reduced pollution levels were a major cause for the rise.
“Since solar electricity production scales linearly with insolation, we would expect the increase to be of similar magnitude,” Peters told BusinessLine from Erlangen in Germany.
The researchers said the new data from Delhi, combined with their earlier findings, provide a solid foundation to further study the impact of air pollution on solar resources. They expect to also find increased output of power from solar panels in other areas where air was cleaner due to lockdown measures.
“Renewable energies, solar energy in particular, can induce a positive feedback-loop to improve sustainability and result in cleaner air. More efforts are needed to provide affordable electrification solutions for the people everywhere, especially in cities like Delhi,” Peters said.
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