Roadmaps for India’s energy future foresee that coal power will continue to play a considerable role until the middle of the 21st century. Among other options, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being considered as a potential technology for decarbonising the power sector. Consequently, it is important to quantify the relative benefits and trade-offs of coal-CCS in comparison to its competing renewable power sources from multiple sustainability perspectives. In this paper, we assess coal-CCS pathways in India up to 2050 and compare coal-CCS with conventional coal, solar PV and wind power sources through an integrated assessment approach coupled with a nexus perspective (energy-cost-climate-water nexus). Our levelized costs assessment reveals that coal-CCS is expensive and significant cost reductions would be needed for CCS to compete in the Indian power market. In addition, although carbon pricing could make coal-CCS competitive in relation to conventional coal power plants, it cannot influence the lack of competitiveness of coal-CCS with respect to renewables. From a climate perspective, CCS can significantly reduce the life cycle GHG emissions of conventional coal power plants, but renewables are better positioned than coal-CCS if the goal is ambitious climate change mitigation. Our water footprint assessment reveals that coal-CCS consumes an enormous volume of water resources in comparison to conventional coal and, in particular, to renewables. To conclude, our findings highlight that coal-CCS not only suffers from typical new technology development related challenges—such as a lack of technical potential assessments and necessary support infrastructure, and high costs—but also from severe resource constraints (especially water) in an era of global warming and the competition from outperforming renewable power sources. Our study, therefore, adds a considerable level of techno-economic and environmental nexus specificity to the current debate about coal-based large-scale CCS and the low carbon energy transition in emerging and developing economies in the Global South.

As the patterns of energy production and consumption shift, the need to distribute power more efficiently becomes imperative. This study is based on realization of an operational smart renewable energy micro grid put up by FluxGen Engineering Technologies in a remote village -- Mendil situated in reserve forest of Belgaum district in Karnataka state, India, and it's applicability in urban context; that is, the possibility of reverse innovation of smart rural micro grids for urban scenarios. As the building sector in India is growing at a rapid pace, there is a great chance that such or even enhanced micro grid systems be introduced in urban scenario. Many smart features related to grid communication, power sharing, power capping, preventive maintenance and billing management can be exercised. This paper focusses and proposes the implementation of smart micro grid systems that can perform energy monitoring, grid communications, energy auditing and power management that is well defined and designed for an apartment or a smart urban locality.

Decentralized energy generation and distribution systems (mini/micro-grids) based on renewable energy sources forms one of the prospective solution for electrification of remote areas where conventional grid penetration is non-feasible. In such scenarios, efficient operation and periodic maintenance becomes indispensable for system sustainability. Deploying these systems in geographically inaccessible areas adds on to the implementation challenges. This paper addresses a distinctive approach in setting up a research oriented 2KW AC solar photovoltaic (PV) micro-grid in a remote village based inside a reserve forest area of India. The objective is to perform baseline measurements for operational and behavioral analysis with reference to the climatic changes. The solar PV generation profiles, battery level indications, weather station data and energy consumption patterns will be recorded by the customized embedded monitoring system. The same shall be beneficial to optimize design configurations in setting up future micro-grids and improve the electronic grid controlling techniques.

A unique way of teaching practical aspects of renewable energy technologies has been experimented in the University of Oldenburg since 1987. An energy laboratory (Energielabor), built in 1982 and powered by renewable energy sources, has been used for practical training, lectures and office space for the staff and students engaged in the field of renewable energy at the University. After 30 years of service, this Energielabor requires revision and needs to be rebuilt to meet the needs of present age. In this direction, as part of a module named ‘Case Study’, PPRE masters' students assessed the locally available renewable energy resources and estimated the energy demand for a newly proposed design for the upcoming new Energielabor. This paper presents the first results of these energy demand and resource assessments, along with highlighting the didactical concepts and motivations behind the newly proposed design.