OpEd: What India and Pittsburgh Have In Common

RE: OpEd: What India and Pittsburgh Have In Common

mcb1 — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 08:58:26 GMT

The solar v xxx power debate will be an interesting thing in the future.

There was a very good program on National Geographic regarding an Indian based organisation Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE) using volunteers to provide 'micro grid' power to a remote monastery and village in the Himalayas that had no electricity.

The current lighting ranged from none to candles or other burning items, and the light quality was poor.

The fuel was trekked in as there were no roads.

They used solar to charge storage batteries which then provided power to LED lights, and was run in 12v for safety.

Watch IEEE Smart Village Volunteers in Action on National Geographic - IEEE - The Institute

IEEE Smart Village Helps Locals Harness the Himalayan Sun - IEEE - The Institute

Breakthrough - National Geographic Channel Power to the People

Using Solar or Wind power for generation is fine, but you still need a baseline generation system to cater for cloudy or still days.

The use of storage batteries is the current cheapest solution, but has limitations and loss of efficiency.

In the meantime these micro-grids are an alternative when there is no power infrastructure or the cost to extend it makes it uneconomic.

Mark

RE: OpEd: What India and Pittsburgh Have In Common

shabaz — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 13:46:36 GMT

There was a short but interesting article in the news today,

Solar, wind and nuclear power each provide more electricity than gas and coal combined for first time | The Independent

apparently yesterday for a period of time energy generated by renewables alone accounted for 50.7% of UK demand, i.e. surpassing coal/gas/nuclear.

The period of time was possibly not long though!

The 50.7% was broken down into the following power levels:

wind: 9.5GW

solar: 7.3GW

biomass and hydro: 1.9GW

Of the remainder 49.3%,

nuclear: 8.2GW

gas: 7.2GW

coal: zero

other (not sure, could be imports?): 2.8GW

I wonder if the national energy organizations have live plotting of this data, or an API. It would be an interesting thing to see. I will ask National Grid in the UK if I can find an e-mail address.. they seem to only address enquiries by letter, not e-mail..

RE: OpEd: What India and Pittsburgh Have In Common

shabaz — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 22:40:39 GMT

That was an interesting article. I see huge adoption of solar in villages in Pakistan, their main problem they are solving there is simply they cannot trust the mains supply, it regularly shuts down.

The electricity companies 'round-robin' the supply to different towns/villages, so that everyone gets a time-slice of power for a few hours, because they don't have the capacity to power all of them simultaneously. It's not great : (

The small solar cell provides a supply for running a couple of low-voltage (e.g. 12V) fans, and the stored energy can be used for running 12-volt LED lamps. Some will also have an inverter for running their fridges etc.

Small solar panels and battery backup is commonplace there, although the cost is still high for people. Technically if we look at solar panels, the solar cells inside them are cheap, a lot of the cost is the waterproof and environment-proof structure.

Taking solar cells and building them into solar panels could be an interesting project, especially if it can be done using easy-to-obtain materials. Another interesting project would be to develop efficient but high quality LED lighting for low-voltage

use. A lot of the lighting I saw was awful, barely usable.

RE: OpEd: What India and Pittsburgh Have In Common

DAB — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 16:43:29 GMT

Interesting perspective, but there are other issues driving power in India.

Agreed, they are reducing coal power, not so much to be Green, but because they do not have the power distribution infrastructure to get the power from the generator to the people.

India is BIG. They have almost no way to effectively provide power to remote areas. The cost to install a reliable power infrastructure is HUGE.

Their solution is to go to local solar power. Both due to the amount of sunlight most areas receive, but more importantly, it eliminates the cost and effort to create the distribution grid.

In their situation local power is reliable, as long as the sun shines, requires minimal cost to install, and reduces the ravages of nature and theft.

I applaud their engineering and management decision. For them it makes very good sense to go local solar as they are starting at a very primitive level in most cases.

Just my opinion.

DAB