16 COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS OCTOBER 2017 FUEL CELLS POISED TO REPLACE INDIA’S DIESEL GENERATORS Scientists at India’s National Chemical Laboratory have pinpointed a clean, cost-effective fuel cell that can replace the unreliable and pollutive diesel generators that power India’s telecom towers. By LEXI CARVER DESPITE SIGNIFICANT ADDITION TO POWER generation and transmission capacities in recent years, India still faces an energy deficit of 2.1% and about 20,000 villages are off-grid. Moreover, electricity supply to urban and rural India is still unreliable. As a result, diesel generators are widely used for decentralized power generation. These generators (Figure 1, top), although inexpensive, are inefficient and pose great environmental and health risks. This is why the Nation

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