The international conference on ‘Advances & Challenges in Energy Research (ICACER- 2019)’ organised by the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management, Nagpur (RCOEM) was inaugurated on Friday. The conference is organised in association with CSIR-NEERI, Institution of Engineers (India) as knowledge partners.

The ICACER-2019 was inaugurated at Chitnavis Centre, Civil lines, Nagpur at the hands of chief guest Prafulla Pathak, Chairman, Solar Energy Society of India (SESI), New Delhi. Dr Shripal Singh, Scientist and Officer In-charge CIMFR, was guest of honour. Chandrakantbhai Thakar, Vice Chairman, RCOEM presided over the function, Govindlal Agarwal, General Secretary, RCOEM, Rajendra Purohit, Secretary, RCOEM, Dr R S Pande, Principal and General Chair, Dr K N Agrawal, Convener and Dr M M Gupta Co-Convener were prominently present.

Dr K N Agrawal, Convener, ICACER-19, in his introductory remarks highlighted the various sessions, plenary talks and deliberations to be held during the two-day conference. The conference delegates are from research organisations, academic institutions in India and abroad and industry personnel. A total of 54 research papers will be presented in the two days of the conference. All registered and presented papers are likely to be published in online special conference issue of IJMPERD, a Scopus indexed journal.

In his presidential address, Chandrakantbhai Thakar spoke about the direct relationship of electricity generation and development of the nation. He urged delegates and researchers to work for society and to use their research work for the benefit of common man.

In his keynote address, Prafulla Pathak, Chairman, Solar Energy Society of India (SESI), New Delhi, spoke about advances and research going on in energy sector. He also spoke about cost of generation of power for conventional and unconventional methods of power generation like solar and wind energy. He briefed about the progress of unconventional energy generation and utilization after independence. He highlighted the e-mobility and large capacity solar power plants.

Dr Lalit Kumar Sahoo, Principal Scientist CSIR-CIMFR, Nagpur, spoke on energy efficiency benchmarking. In his talk, he highlighted the reduction in losses during energy conversion and briefed about the energy conservation techniques for various household and commercial applications. The day was followed by the sessions of industry experts on industrial case studies and technical paper presentation sessions by the participants.