1. Challenges and Opportunities of Distributed Renewable Power

The global energy sector is now going through a transition. Energy is a basic need of modern civilization and often per capita energy consumption is considered as an index of the living standard of people of a country. Starting from the industrial revolution till date, the majority of the energy supply has been from fossil fuel resources. As a result, sixty per cent of the global fossil fuel reserves have been consumed in the last two hundred years. Moreover, the emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, have caused a severe threat to the future human survival, called climate change. There is a desperate need to replace the fossil fuel-based power sector with suitable renewable power. However, renewable power options are widely varying with several limitations like intermittency, low density, not cost-effective, etc. In addition to large-scale renewable options, smaller distributed power generation with or without grid may be a future suitable option for a smoother energy transition. For this, opportunities are to be explored and simultaneously addressing the challenges involved for distributed renewable power. In this book, this issue is addressed from several viewpoints including sustainability. New technology assessment, overview of potential technologies, reporting of promising future technologies, modelling and simulations as well as applications and socio-economic impacts are reported in different chapters of this book. The book is a state of the art but brief compilation of the field for both researchers/senior students as well as industry professionals.