Rajiv Gupta
Senior Professor
Birla Institute of Technology and Science
India

Biography
Professor (Dr.) Rajiv Gupta at present at BITS Pilani (Raj.), India. has more than 25 years of teaching and research experience and authored number of books, published more than 100 papers in Journals and conferences and guided no of Ph.D. students and has research interest in GIS and sustainable energy. He has successfully completed sponsored projects/ workshops from World Bank, GOI, DST, UGC, India worth more than 200 lacs.

Abstract
Mapping Solar Potential of West India: A GIS Based Analysis

This work focuses on estimation of global solar radiation and, in particular, it explores the effect of temperature on solar radiation profile of western India. An accurate knowledge of solar radiation distribution in each particular geographical location is crucial for the promotion of solar energy technology. The best way of knowing the amount of global solar radiation is to install quality instruments at many locations in the given region. This requires their day-to-day maintenance, recording and calibration, which is a very costly affair in developing countries like India. We use geographical information system (GIS) to solve this problem. The efficiency of the solar cell is not at the maximum temperature. Paper also finds the optimum field temperature basis where the maximum solar energy can be harnessed annually. Thus, this paper discusses the application of GIS to map the solar potential in western India and regions suitable for tapping solar energy on the basis of global solar radiation data.