Revolutionising solar power solutions

Ayush Misra founded AmpereHour Energy to better manage stored solar energy

- Namita Shibad

Renewable energy is about more than just generating megawatts of power. While installing solar panels or wind turbines is a crucial first step, effectively utilising the energy they produce presents a distinct challenge. As the cost of solar panels dropped over the years, solar energy became accessible toa growing number of households.

However, while the cost of generating solar power became affordable, storing it in batteries remained an expensive obstacle. This led to the introduction of net metering policies in 2013. With net metering, homeowners and businesses no longer needed to invest in costly batteries.

Instead, they could feed excess solar energy back into the grid, which, until then, had primarily relied on coal and thermal power. Suddenly, the grid had to accommodate renewable energy as well.

‘Ayush Misra, a business development manager at Clean-Max Solar, recognised a key issue as renewable energy adoption grew.

Through his interactions with customers, he saw the challenges that would only intensify as the share of renewable energy increased.

“Coal and thermal energy can be ramped up or down at will because the source is available whenever it’s needed,” he explains. “So, if energy demand spikes at night, coal plants can quickly increase output. But with solar energy, that’s not the case.”

“Solar power is generated during daylight, and the power thus generated has to be stored. When itis plugged into the grid. Typically, energy consumption increases at night when solar energy cannot be produced. So we need batteries.” But that is Several large companies are in the business of manufacturing solar batteries. So what was Ayush’s great discovery?

“Batteries are made using various technologies—lithium, sodium, and so on. But storing energy is just half the job. The real challenge is how that stored energy is used: how it needs to be ramped up or down depending on the demand,” Ayush explains.