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Mar-06-2009
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Energy and Demographics
In ten years global population is expected to increase by one billion people. If each of these persons should require power equivalent to a 50 watt bulb then the additional power required would be 50,000 MWs, which equals to investment in establishing new 100 X 500 MW power plants.
If used properly as we do with fire, nuclear power is a source of clean energy as long as nuclear waste is processed for recycling. I am for nuclear power as we have only few choices to serve the energy needs of global population of 6.8 billion in 2009, which is expected to be more than 9 billion by 2050.
Power for India
Power is generated by thermal (76%), hydroelectric (21%) and nuclear (4%) power plants in India. In 2007, the installed power generation capacity of India stood at 138,252 MW. The current annual per capita power consumption is about 612 kWh while the world average is 2,596 kWh. India"s high economic growth rates have created a surge in the demand for electricity due to which the Indian government has set an ambitious target to add approximately 78,000 MW of installed generation capacity by 2012. The total demand for electricity in India is expected to cross 950,000 MW by 2030.
Transmission Losses
Electricity losses in India during transmission and distribution are extremely high and vary between 30 to 45%. If required investments by private and public sectors in the infrastructure is driven to achieve better efficiency for the power transmission than with current power capacity India can serve an additional up to 20% of population.
In 2004-05, electricity demand outstripped supply by 7-11%. Due to shortage of electricity, blackouts are common throughout India and this has adversely effected the country"s economic growth. Theft of electricity, common in most parts of urban India, amounts to 1.5% of India"s GDP.
Despite an ambitious rural electrification program, some 400 million Indians still have no access to electricity. While 80% of 800 million people or 160 million households in rural Indian have at least an electricity line, just 44% of rural households have access to electricity. According to a sample of 97,882 households in 2002, electricity was the main source of lighting for 53% of rural households compared to 36% in 1993.
Energy Efficient Technologies
A common perception of India"s energy policy implementation is that the government by current crop of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats and the greedy business houses is not really interested in the welfare of poor but is focused on the benefits for the comfortable or advantaged class.
In India, lighting comprises 20 per cent of residential electricity consumption. Energy efficiency is the smartest way to reduce demand and CO2 emissions to minimize global warming.
If public switches from incandescent lamps to compact fluorescent (CFL) and light emitting diodes (LED) lamps then same grid power can serve additional Indians, may be an additional up to 30%. Luminescence provided by 50 watt incandescent lamp is comparable to that by a 15 watt CFL lamp and about 2-3 watt LED lamp.
The Bachat Lamp Yojana
India is taking its first major step towards curbing global warming. Under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, the Ministry of Power has decided to replace 40 crore incandescent light bulbs all over the country with environment-friendly CFLs by 2012.
The Bachat Lamp Yojana aims to save up to 55 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to shutting down four big coal power plants. Emission of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane is one of the major contributors to climate change.
For CFL lamp distribution the country is divided into project areas, each with a population of 5 lakh. In each area, one of 24 chosen electricity generation companies will go from door-to-door and sell CFLs for Rs 15. The companies will buy the bulbs for Rs 100 each but sell them for Rs 15. They will make profits by selling carbon credits. The distribution of CFLs has started in Vishakhapatnam and Haryana. In another six months, it will spread to other parts.
The Bachat Lamp Yojana uses Clean Development Mechanism, a system which allows developed countries to invest in clean technology in developing countries. This will enable electricity generation companies in India to sell CFLs at a reduced rate and recover the money by selling carbon credits to European nations.
If the world follows India"s example, the cumulative effect would be equivalent to shutting down around 220 coal-fired power plants.
Nuclear and Alternate Power
In arriving at the fuel choices I am mindful of increasing demand for food, consumer products and energy needs of growing global population. India at any time in next 50 years is likely to represents about 17% of global population. Once cost-effective efficient power usage technologies are established in India then it can serve as a model for rest of the world"s poor that currently are exceed 2.4 billion people.
India not only has adequate thorium fuel supplies, it also has locally developed technology for processing spent nuclear fuel and it also has technology for building thorium power plants. India"s thorium reserves are estimated at 319,000 tons or 12% of estimated world thorium reserves. India"s U235 reserves are limited. Thorium could provide hundreds of times the energy with the same mass of uranium fuel. A necessary component of the Thorium Power Technology (TPT) is reprocessed U235 waste. A commercial pilot plant for India"s TPT is expected to start operating in 2010.
The following information should be treated as relative since the data are old (1955).
Estimates for total global nuclear fuel supply = 25 million tons uranium; if only U235 is burned, energy yield will be about 12X1018 Btu.
With FBRs (fuel breeder reactors) all the uranium plus 1 million ton of thorium could be burned in TPT, the energy yield will be 1,800X1018 Btu, which is approximately 150 times the energy yield that of U235 alone.
World"s reserve of fossil fuel, predominately coal are estimated as about 80X1018 Btu or less than 5% of total nuclear energy potential.
Unless clean coal technology is available to protect environmental global warming coal usage for power in India should be minimized.
Global warming trends make the hydroelectric power plants unreliable in future.
That leaves alternate fuels - solar, wind and biowaste/biogas-genset technologies. Each of these technologies is amenable for setting up off-grid power plants to serve needs of rural communities with as many as several thousand families.
Biowaste/Biogas-Genset Power Plants
A distributive energy model for India is needed as the cost of connecting and maintaining the low- and high-tension power grids to 700,000 rural India communities is prohibitive. The grid power losses in India are high at up to 40%. The distributive model calls for off-grid mini (10-50 KW) power plants of renewable biowaste or alternate energy sources such as solar and wind. Solar and wind power are high tech power solutions requiring highly skilled engineers to build it. For routine maintenance of solar and wind power plants low-skilled workers - illiterate and high school drop-outs - can be trained as is done at the Barefoot College, Tilonia, Rajasthan. Solar energy is available only in day time and wind power only when winds are blowing. Such solutions are best suited for hybrid power plants; a part of energy has to be supplied by the grid or off-grid power available on demand at all hours of the day.
Biowaste/biogas-genset or Biowaste Gas Power Generators (BGPG) plant is relatively low tech technology that can generate much needed jobs in rural communities.
For rural India I prefer using the BGPG based (up to 50KW) off-grid power plants under local community control to serve a few thousand households. For biogas generation feed can be grasses such as corn or makka, Jawar, bajara, etc. The technology is available from ARTI, a Pune based NGO managed by Dr. Karve.
For year-around biogas generation, multiple cropping capabilities are needed. One hector or 2.5 acres of land for crops or biowaste is needed to generate sufficient biowaste for each 10 KW power. Water is also needed for cultivating crops and additional land to set up a rain water collection tank of 75 to 100 lakh liters/year capacity for each 10 KW BGPG plant. This technology is readily accessible to rural communities that are willing to pool together community land assets as has been done by Hivrebazar, Pani Panchayat, and many more communities in Maharashtra.
All other methods of power generation based on fossil fuel require additional fuel cost; fossil fuels are usable only once as they are converted to carbon oxides, which are environmentally unacceptable as it causes global warming.
Mini-Nuclear plants
The Hyperion Power Module (HPM) is a mini-nuclear power plant and it was conceived at Los Alamos National Laboratory and licensed to New Mexico-based Hyperion for commercialization under the laboratory"s technology transfer program. Approximately 4,000 units of the same design, each offering 70 megawatts of thermal (heat) energy, or 27 megawatts of electricity via steam turbine, will be produced and sealed at manufacturing sites. That amount of electricity can power 20,000 average American-style homes or the industrial equivalent for $20 to $30 million each.
The HPM is a portable clean, emission-free, affordable energy unit. Each Hyperion Power Module (HPM) is a sealed "hot tub", approximately 1.5 meter in length and never opened at the site it is used. It is transportable by ship, truck or train to site location where it is buried deep in ground and guarded by security personnel to inhibit theft of the unit for unintended use. The spent HPM is returned to factory for refueling and reuse.
In average Indian rural village, 400 to 2,000 homes are estimated to need from 50 to 250 KWs energy. A 25 MW mini-nuclear unit can serve a cluster of 100 to 200 villages described by Prof. A J P Abdul Kalam in his PURA (providing rural amenities to rural areas) model, in a monogram, "Envisioning an Empowered Nation", co-authored with A Sivathanu Pillai (2004).
This product should be duplicated by Indian nuclear scientist as soon as possible to make it available at affordable prices to rural communities implementing the PURA model to achieve a goal of transforming India into a developed nation by 2020. If India can build nuclear submarines and nuclear air craft carriers, designing and building a mini-power plant should be relatively simple.
Let"s face it. Economically viable solutions are in our face. What is lacking is public participation with practical initiatives that exclude the dependency on government for free energy supplies.
The dish on solar cooking is an idea very much suitable for rural India. Solar cooking is "a pinch of effort and a whole lot of compassion mixed together and allowed to simmer."
Solar cookers convert sunlight to heat. Inexpensive solar cookers are made of a cardboard box and aluminum or other reflective metal foils (www.solarcookers.org).
Solar cooking requires some additional components besides the sun. Dark surfaces get hotter than light ones, so for high efficiency a black pot is required; preferably a shallow thin, dark metal pot with tight-fitting lid to hold in heat and moisture. In the case of solar cooking, letting off steam isn"t a good thing. To hold in the heat, sometimes a transparent heat trap is needed, such as a clear plastic bag. Reflective panels placed around the pot increase the heating potential.
Certain variables affect effectiveness of solar cooking. While solar cooking can be done almost anywhere, it"s most practical in warm, dry and sunny climates. In areas that aren"t warm and sunny year-round, it isn"t possible to solar cook year-round, especially in the cold winter months.
What kinds of consumable concoctions can be made in a solar cooker?
. Foods that cook well in simple solar cookers are eggs, stews and grains or any other item that cook for a long time at low temperatures.
. Unlike microwave oven that offers practically instant cooking, solar cookers are "absentee cooking" or slow pot cooking.
. Absentee cooking is where you put food in a solar cooker and leave it for a few hours-without burning it!
Benefits
. It costs $0.15/hour to cook on a 6-inch electric burner; or every 100 hours use equals 15 dollars.
. Solar cooking is lifesaver in some developing countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Chad, where people must often walk long distances to gather firewood for cooking, an arduous and sometimes dangerous task.
. Solar cookers also make water safe to drink through water pasteurization by killing disease-causing organisms.
. It is impossible to burn food while solar cooking (the oven"s temperature doesn"t get hot enough).
. In the era of global warming, solar cooking is good for the environment, your wallet and helps some developing communities throughout the world.
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