Techno-economic understanding of Indian energy-storage market: A perspective on green materials-based supercapacitor technologies

Meeting energy needs is one area that requires continuous and consistent attention from the research community. Being a cross-disciplinary research area, one part of energy research is not always explicitly clear for other researchers working from a different viewpoint. Expertise is required in several fields, from economy to energy storage to materials engineering. This article offers a rounded picture of the energy-economy relation, market opportunity, and material-based solution to address the market demand. A study reveals 1–50 F range (with <5 V) of supercapacitors are in the most demand category in the Indian market. Hence, a data-driven approach is used to gain further insight into the market's technical requirements. The informatics-based study uses several commercial supercapacitors under the 5 V category. Using a feature ranking approach, we suggest that an energy density of 4.06 ± 0.05 Wh kg−1 is the minimum requirement for the Indian market. Henceforth, greenness is discussed and explored for supercapacitor-electrode materials for the targeted value of energy density. As observed in this work, the hybrid energy storage systems and metal oxide-carbon hybrid materials can enable low-cost, environment-friendly, clean energy storage solutions for renewable energy resources.