A Blog to Follow

I came across this blog by the owners of two electric BMWs just a few minutes ago, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the potential that electric cars with solar charging have. Once again, I'll repeat that this would be ideal for a country like India where every inch of the soil is bathed in sunshine for more than 300 days a year for an average of 8 hours a day. With this, I hope to restart this blog. It has lain dormant for a long time because I was busy changing universities and switching to a completely different program of study. Now, I think I have something with which to charge forward.

Growing Crops With No Water - Scientific American Article

The Scientific american has a very timely article about growing crops without using irrigation or rain water. These methods used by humans for thousands of years, are now being reintroduced in the USA because of a long drought in several parts of the country. I would think that this would be an ideal solution for many parts of India as well, as much of the country is perennially short of water, and, in other cases, the facilities to trap and use monsoon rains are non existent. Please check out this article and let me know what you think. Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Dr. Mayraj Fahim for this article.

The First All Electric Taxi Service in the USA - When Will India Follow?T

he first all electric taxi service in the USA has begun operating in the state of Oregon. Personally, I think that this would be an even more fantastic idea for India and the rest of South Asia. There are several reasons for this: 1. Distances covered in most Indian cities are shorter than those that American commuters have to travel. Electric vehicles work best at running shorter distances 2. In heavy traffic, gasoline vehicles are at their least efficient. In the stop and go traffic that is typical of Indian cities especially during working hours, electric vehicles would be a fantastically efficient option 3. I know that this is a drum that I have been beating for a while, but Indian cities are usually bathed in sunlight for more than 350 days a year. From my conversation with some Japanese solar power entrepreneurs, I understand that solar powerplants of 250 kW and larger can be profitable in less than 3 years if they get sunlight for at least 3 hours a day. The option for India would be well over that time. I would assume an average of around 7 hours a day and that includes the dark skies when there is little light during the monsoons. What better way to partially / fully charge these electric taxis than to use the abundant (and free) sunlight that falls on India instead of using imported coal or crude? 4. While I have not been to India in a long time, from what I see on the news, the trend in the country is for people to entertain themselves at malls. These days, Indian malls are also doing badly during the current economic downturn. Mall owners in India are required by law to allocate a certain number of parking spots for taxis and autorickshaws. If they were to put solar panels up on their roofs and offer a paid charging option to electric taxis, this could be an additional source of income for them. Yes, this is speculation, but they would have the experience of several projects at locations around the world like the Pecan / Mueller development in Austin TX, dozens of projects in Germany and Japan and other parts of the world to draw upon 5. India already has electric cars which are even exported as quadricycles to other parts of the world. General Motors planned to build electric cars in India some time ago on one if its miniature Chevrolet hatchback platforms. It should be fairly simple to use these already available vehicles to offer electric taxi services in India Over to the planners in Delhi. Let's see what they come up with, and, more that they are watching what is happening in the rest of the world.

Austin TX - a transportation Model for India to Look At

The city of Austin TX has been able to manage explosive population growth by implementing a highly efficient private - public transportation model. This is the kind of model that, hopefully, India will look at as Indian cities see the same sort of explosive growth these days. I seriously hope that someone in India is watching this beautiful city and taking cues from it.

New Wind Turbine design from France Also Harvests Moisture from the Air

I learned about the Eole Water wind turbine and water harvesting system from Ecogeek, a blog that I subscribe and link to over here. The idea of a wind turbine that can generate electricity and an attached system that can harvest and purify water from moisture in the air with no need for any external power source suggests tremendous potential in parts of South India that I know extremely well. Two places that spring to mind are the North Arcot District in my former home state of Tamil Nadu and the Anantapur / Tadipatri region in Andhra Pradesh, both of which suffer from severe water shortages and have electricity supply failures for several hours every day. Let's hope that my friends in India pick up from this point on - there's potential here that could easily be exploited. Both these areas are solidly middle class and well educated with fine educational institutions, medical facilities and industries located nearby. There should be room to offer an advanced technical solution that promises to address the severe problems that these areas face.

A British-Indian Solar Vehicle Initiative To Applaud

By sheer chance, I came across this collaboration between the Moss Solar Trust and the Maharana Mewar Charitable Foundation that is doing some very interesting work on solar powered conversions of conventional vehicles that are in use in India. I find their autorickshaw conversions and their smaller solar boat conversions particularly interesting. I hope to write to the Moss Solar people and find out more about them and their work very shortly, but, in the meantime, there's a nice website to check out. I do wish them success - my own attempts at business in this field in India have been agonizingly slow, and the frustration that comes through is often reflected on this and my other blog as some friends may have noticed. As always, I shall look forward to receiving feedback - either on this blog, or, as some might prefer, in personal communication. Do keep the responses coming.

Smart Planet: If Airports in Tennessee could Save so much Power by Going Solar, Imagine How much Indian Airports CoSuld Save

mart Planet has this piece about the Chattanooga Airport in the beautiful state of Tennessee saving 90,000 kWh of power in a year by putting up 4.5 acres of solar panels over the airport. I am guessing that these are early generation solar PVs - the latest from Semprius Solar are three times as efficient. Just imagine how much electricity could be saved, how much pollution could be reduced from the thermal powerplants that generate power in India, and how much less load shedding there would be in the rest of the country because of power saved, if this readily available technology were used more often. Large government buildings could also be an excellent mounting platform for these PVs for even more power savings. And, of course, there are the new private sector buildings - software parks, malls, large apartment condominiums and so on. The potential is immense. Someone is going to show some initiative one of these days and do something good. My guess is that whoever this first mover is, is going to end up laughing all the way to the bank. If I were to bet on a company to do this, my bet would be on the Tatas. Let's see where this goes . . .

Ecogeek: Japanese Solar Panel Owners earned $ 1.2 Billion Last Year

There's a lesson in this for India, a country that is bathed in sunshine for well over 300 days a year in most cities - the Ecogeek website shows how profitable solar panels have been for Japanese adopters. There was a time when these panels were expensive and they would have been out of the budget of the average Indian home or even business, but prices have been falling as companies across the world build more of these and engineers devise clever ways to produce them more cheaply from month to month. India used to offer some of the world's best subsidies for installing solar panels, solar water heaters and other solar powered equipment. I have no idea what the laws are like now. However, the simple thing to consider is that every new mall, every new apartment block, every new hotel and every government building has vast areas on the roof which could be covered with solar panels. I also feel that if India becomes serious about going solar, more companies will compete for Indian business and bring prices down even more. With much of India facing severe electric supply shortages on a daily basis, this may be one way to address the generation and distribution issues across the country. If there is surplus power, it could be fed back into the grid as happens in Japan, and that would mean surplus cash every year for those who invest in these panels. Win-win and there's no catch - what's not to like in this?

Courtesy Autoblog Green: An excellent Infographic on electric Vehicle Usage Costs

I seriously wish that someone in New Delhi, especially in the Energy Ministry and in the Planning Commission would read this. The fact is that electric vehicles do not have the range that gasoline vehicles do because they are slow to charge. But, for more than 90% of daily commuting, they are more than adequate. The fact also is that they are very cheap to run. Even mains supplied electricity costs vastly less than filling the tank up daily, and, if you use solar power to charge your car, you don't even pay for electricity.

Now, wait a minute - I hear skeptics like energy policcy specialist and all round idiot N N Sachitanand in India blabber about how inefficient solar PVs are. I've got news for these bozos and I've posted this on my other blog. A North Carolina solar panel manufacturing company has exceeded the efficiency of even the most advanced diesel engines. I also have information that Japan's Sharp Corporation (a division of Panasonic now) are planning to introduce their own very high efficiency solar panels in 2013 with efficiency levels competing with internal combustion engines. And, the "fuel" used in these solar systems, I must remind the anti solar bozos, is free.

Courtesy Autoblog Green: An excellent Infographic on electric Vehicle Usage Costs

I seriously wish that someone in New Delhi, especially in the Energy Ministry and in the Planning Commission would read this. The fact is that electric vehicles do not have the range that gasoline vehicles do because they are slow to charge. But, for more than 90% of daily commuting, they are more than adequate. The fact also is that they are very cheap to run. Even mains supplied electricity costs vastly less than filling the tank up daily, and, if you use solar power to charge your car, you don't even pay for electricity.

Now, wait a minute - I hear skeptics like energy policcy specialist and all round idiot N N Sachitanand in India blabber about how inefficient solar PVs are. I've got news for these bozos and I've posted this on my other blog. A North Carolina solar panel manufacturing company has exceeded the efficiency of even the most advanced diesel engines. I also have information that Japan's Sharp Corporation (a division of Panasonic now) are planning to introduce their own very high efficiency solar panels in 2013 with efficiency levels competing with internal combustion engines. And, the "fuel" used in these solar systems, I must remind the anti solar bozos, is free.

India Plans to Allow Jet Fuel Imports When there is Abundant Raw Material Available to Manufacture it Locally

Trust New Delhi to do things bass-ackwards, to modify a term not normally used in polite company. The UAE based newspaper Khaleej Times has this piece about India allowing airlines to import Jet Fuel. If the Government of India had looked, it would have found that the US Air Force recently contracted to buy Jet Fuel from this Texas company, Terrabon Inc, which produces it from food waste and sewage. The Terrabon process has been under development at Texas A and M University for a long time and the company now have viable products both for cars and for jet aircraft. Their process converts sewage and food waste into a Synthetic Crude which can be refined into the final product. And, the prices are slightly higher than those for gasoline or jet fuel made from crude, but, in the case of a country like India with 1.1 billion people, there is always going to be enough sewage to offer an economy of scale to make this vastly more viable than in the USA. Indians live in vastly more crowded circumstances as well, making the collection of the sewage for processing far easier than in a huge country like the USA where distances are far greater and concentrations of people much smaller.

I wish New Delhi - or even a state government - takes the initiative to invite Terrabon to use their technology to turn the completely useless sewage into usable fuel. If the richest country in the world uses this technology to try and save money, there's no reason why the world's poorest country shouldn't do this as well.

Excellent Discussion on Solar Thermal Energy

An excellent post on the always excellent Low Tech Magazine website discusses the uses of Solar Thermal energy. Speaking in an Indian context, I have written about how some Indian states are doing a good job offering incentives for apartment buildings that use solar water heaters. I have also written about how religious bodies in India including the Shirdi Sai Baba complex and some others have begun using solar power to cook food for devotees. The potential to do much more than this exists. Please click on the link to learn how.

And, follow the Low Tech Magazine website. It is well worth checking out from time to time.

Back Blogging After a Long Hiatus

I have been off this blog for a long time - not because I tired of it or anything like that, but because I was simply overwhelmed with work. It was difficult managing my academic pursuits with earning money and blogging. As I have temporarily put university work aside and persuaded my school to put me on probation so that I might rejoin later, I am back. Hopefully, I shall have something of value to contribute and be able to interact with more people interested in the same issues that interest me.