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Krishna Dwaipayana
When I was a high school going child, sometimes my headmaster, Sri Chadalavada
Jagannadham(won best teacher award from President of India) used to call those
students(whose class period could not be conducted due to leave/absence of a teacher) to
sit under the cool shadow of a tree near his room. During this period, if he was busy, he
used to ask the leader of the class to manage those students and if he was free, he used
to come and try his level best so as at least one of us understand/realise (by showing a
Rickshaw Puller) on how he had been contributing taxes due to which we could have decent
education at an affordable price! I am not sure how many of his students really
understood but that incident had been imprinted in my mind like anything from those days
and when I started my career in 1997, since then I have been very deeply thinking how can
I payback this Rickshaw Puller!
Globalisation gave me a nice slap by saying that it is not only that you can hardly see a
Rickshaw Puller on streets any more in cities, towns and villages, who are fighting on
right to work Read about how Rickshaw pullers win right to work on Delhi streets at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/11/rickshaw-ruling-delhi but also you need to
pay from your nose very heavily for your children's studies! Not just this now I pay
Education Cess apart from that I pay for water, land, energy, toll, income and what not!!
I am yet to realise my dream of bringing back this Rickshaw Puller in the form of
Rickshaw Driver (whose Rickshaw runs on Electricity) in most parts of this planet. This is
not impossible as I could see such transformation even in so-called less developing
country "Bangladesh". Read more about Electric Rickshaws in Rangpaur at
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=101849 with the help of
Chinese (who have been thinking beyond communism and capitalism-I call it as sharing and
caring (but no more isms!)...Also look at the spirit of these tiny countrymen to use
solar energy to run an electric rickshaw at Rickshaws That Run On Solar Power. Read more
about this at http://ep-
bd.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=72:greenpage&catid=39:covercateg
ory&Itemid=103. Of course India also has done some face saving work like Now Solar
Rickshaws on Delhi Roads. Read more about this at
http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/03/stories/2008100354590400.htm
During my in-depth investigation for this fate, I realised that some of us consuming
excess energy is the route cause and unless and until, we ensure energy for all human
beings, it is impossible to have a social balance in the society. Hence I started working
in this direction and penning down a small book called "The Journey Towards Energy For
All". By the way, I stopped blaming politicians any more as corporate has become the
powerful institution like a Church/Mosque/Temple
This is just the beginning of my journey and humbly requests all like-minded human beings
(including politicians) to support this initiative!
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So we will start from the beginning days of civilization in a very simple tabular form as
following for better understanding!
Omni(vore)-
Veg & Meat
3
Sir Arthur Cotton believes that a nation should give top priority for inland water
transport and agriculture rather than rail and road network
I have been utmost cautious for negligible usage of words Power, Grant, Subsidy which
have been grossly misused in Energy Wars! It is often difficult to remove bugs, improve
quality, and make products and processes more user-friendly without a more profound
understanding of the natural processes involved.
The first effective application of electricity was not in electricity transmission, but
in communication.
The use of electricity as a prime means of transmitting and using energy was technically
even more difficult than the development of the telegraph. Before it could be made to
work, an efficient way had to be devised to generate electric electricity using other
sources of energy; devices to transform electricity back into kinetic energy, light, or
heat at the receiving end had to be created; and a way of transmitting current over large
distances had to be developed. In addition, electricity came in two forms, alternating
and direct current and a decision had to be made regarding which of the two forms was to
dominate.
Edison was a brute-force experimenter, but lacked formal training in mathematics and
physics. Tesla, by contrast, had his education, which was needed to understand AC
electricity. Now imagine what could have happened if Bill Gates was born when Edison was
born and Edison in the later period when Bill Gates was born!!!
Westinghouse (Urban)s View: Alternating current could be transmitted over long distances
at high voltages, using lower current, and thus lower energy loss and greater
transmission efficiency, and then conveniently stepped down to low voltages for use in
homes and factories. But in practice we all know how a metal hook can be put on electric
wire and do electricity theft, which is a very big menace even today for many
distribution companies across the developing world! This is where Edisons view counts!!
4
Many house dwellers around all major coal, hydro, nuclear electricity generating plants
in the developing world still have negligible access to electricity, which is a hard
reality to be witnessed and these kind of practical problems were very clearly envisaged
th
by Edison and with such a foresight he had said in 19 century it self Someday, man
will harness the rise and fall of the tides, imprison the energy of the sun, and release
st
atomic energy which is becoming true in the 21 century
Why Edison was ignored then like Indian Government had ignored Anna Hazare initially?
Probably because of raising his voice like "The terrible thing about interest is that
those people who will not be turning a shovel full of dirt on this (Muscle Shoals Dam
Project. Read more about this at http://www.cityofmuscleshoals.com/Default.asp?ID=11) or be
contributing a pound of material towards it will collect more money from the United
States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work on it" many
urbanites got irked with him and hence made us to fool around AC distribution network.
Imagine what could have happened if media was so active as on date on Edisons time?
Now lets have a look at some strong recommendations of Global Environment Fund to USA:-
The era of cheap, abundant petroleumthe cornerstone of the 20th century American
way of lifeis over, even if in coming months or years oil prices fall back to more
reasonable levels. After 60 years of economic policies and international diplomacy
favoring free trade in and high consumption of oil, the country must now reckon
with the fact that our high dependence on oil for transportation, in particular,
poses serious national security threats, exacerbates the trade imbalance, and has
massive negative environmental consequences at the local and global levels
Aside from threatening to levy windfall profit taxes on oil companies and trying to
persuade producer countries to pump more oil, the primary policy response has been
the promotion of large-scale subsidies for production of ethanol and biodiesel. The
initial euphoria over agricultural-based fuels as the holy grail of American energy
strategy has given way to concerns about the ensuing worldwide disruptions in the
agricultural sector, the economic viability of corn-based ethanol and unintended
environmental problems. The debate on biofuels will continue, no doubt, but it is
difficult to make the case that biofuels are the pillars of a long-term energy
strategy
In Jan2008, Craig Venter- Human Genome sequencing fame was sequencing thousands of
living organisms around the planet which he finds in the oceans, looking for the best
energy conversion mechanism. His hope is to find the most optimized way nature converts
CO2 and sunlight into chemical bonds, make those chemical leftovers float to the surface
as a collectable gas and generate a living refinery that can make liquid/gas energy by
use of "living solar collectors". The question that was left unanswered was posed by
Peter - whether the physicists or the biologists will solve the energy problem for all of
us. I believe the problem is so large that all scientists will have their place in the
sun (pun-intended)--As narrated by Shai Agassi in January 2008 on his blog at
http://shaiagassi.typepad.com/the_long_tailpipe/2008/01/davos-2008.html
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In response to the above Shai Agassis great initiative, Mr. Maurice Raymond Adema,
inventor of Electrivore behavior of human beings passionately shared the following in
Feb2008
I see it as a start of a much needed energy revolution which in turn will trigger
the 3rd industrial revolution.
One important factor to make the revolution even faster is to start working on
eradication of "energy illiteracy" which can be done very fast through introduction
of the "Joule Standard"
It cannot be denied that the world's population and even energy experts and policy
makers are in fact "energy illiterate". That's why you see corn being turned into
biofuels....to burn it...Human being are used to burn things to get access to their
energy (they burn on average 30x more energy than that they consume for food; and thus
we should call human being "Burnivore") see www.burnivore.com
The reason why people are energy illiterate is that when we talk about energy we never
talk in the correct units. Oil guys talk in barrels, gas-guys in cubic feet, coal guys
in metric tons and electricity guys in Watt and kilowatts and alternative fuel guys in
Mtoes Mboes, solar guys in Watt-peaks and the list goes on.
Why don't we just start using the unit of energy that was already agreed as the unit
for energy 100 years ago? This unit is in fact already widely used in electricity world
but strangely nobody knows that.... (or have forgotten)
Why are electricity consuming devices the only consumers that consume something without a
per.....
A lamp consumes 100 Watt (why don't people ask per what....???
Why not with electric devices? Because per is undercover of Watt. Watt means Joule per
second! But who is interested in what a device consumes per second? We need to know
how much it consumes per hour, per day per month or per year; because that is what we
pay for.
People think that what they pay for is how many kilowatts per hour they use....??? But a
kWh does not mean kilowatt per hour but kilowatt x hour which is simply 3, 6 MJ....It is
Joules that you pay for, and Joules that you use!
It is high time to implement the "Joule Standard" for all energy generators, storage
and consuming devices so that we finally become energy literate.
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Nobody has a problem to visualize a 3 meter tall person with a bodyweight of 40kg...Why?
because most people are weight and length literate simply because the units meter and kg
are used for everything. You don't measure the height of a door with a different unit
that the length of a table.....logic right? ...so why don't we use this logic with
energy as well?
A fuel burning car consumes between 3 and 10 MJ (Mega-Joule) per km while an electric
car of even better performance consumes only 0.3 to 0.5 MJ per km.....these are
interesting numbers!
Solar panels Wind generators and all other generating devices should also be rated
in MJ/day, per month or per year instead of a number in theory in a lab under ideal
conditions. (those numbers are for engineers)
If you want to drive an electric car for 50km per day you need 25MJ of electricity. A
Solar panel (1,5sqm) can generate 2,5MJ per day so your car needs 10 of those panels
to provide the energy that your car would consume.
This is what the Joule Standard is about making things easy and transparent.
I hope that those future electric cars are going to have energy meters that tell you how
much energy is left in your battery let's say 50 MJ and how much at present speed you
are consuming let's say 0,5MJ/km and tells you that you have a distance balance of 100km
left.
Aired were similar views by Jeffry Leonard, CEO, Global Environment Fund in his foreword
of The Electricity Economy in Aug 2008:-
After 30 years studying, debating and investing in challenges at the complex interface of
energy use, environmental problems, technology development and economic prosperity, I
have come to the conclusion that America needs a clear, bold energy strategy to guide it
through the next four decades. The strategy must prioritize policies, public
infrastructure investments and long-term technology development around one central theme.
The theme is electrification the pervasive use of electricity throughout the economy,
and particularly the substitution of petroleum-based fuels with electricity as the core
energy supply for transportation uses.
Our electricity system is a huge system of interconnected parts, and if one of the pieces
is not synchronized or breaks, the losses can be massive or even grind the entire system
to a halt
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Unnoticed by most, the developed world has become utterly dependent on electricity, for
its lifestyle, its security and its prosperity. This dependence forces us to rely on:
Small mistakes that can ripple into major outages (as occurred in the Northeast
Blackout of 2003)
Market manipulation (as made infamous by Enron)
Politics of
o In India where people & policy makers are more familiar with oil and coal,
economic hit man advices to invest in gas for transportation and gas, nuclear
fuel for electricity generation! Read this story Fuel Crisis hinders
ambitions of captive electricity at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.business-
standard.com/india/news/fuel-crisis-hinders-ambitionscaptive-power/464604/
You can even notice how strong these fuel lobbies who will even influence
media to deny the access for such (objectionable for them) content and this
is where you should appreciate Google for its open-access policy!
8
o In Bangladesh another economic hit man advices them to invest in oil for
transportation and electricity generation where people & policy makers are
more familiar with gas! Read this story Govt at risk of paying large
compensation to RPPs at http://www.thefinancialexpress-
bd.com/more.php?news_id=125935&date=2011-02-12
Even though many countries on this earth have got freedom on paper, many of us do not
have energy freedom and still we depend on centralised electricity generating stations!
Before Modernisation/Globalisation:-
1. Used to eat whatever nature gives-Food For All-Modern needs also mostly fulfilled
2. Used to wear whatever nature gives-Clothing For All- Modern needs also mostly
fulfilled
3. Used to live with natures support in the form of rock, plant, etc-Shelter For All-
Modern needs also mostly fulfilled
Having understood the above, its high time that we look at population of Top.10
countries(in millions) who are still lagging in basic energy needs like, cooking and
access to electricity
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Relying on traditional use of
Africa biomass as fuel
Share of
Rank Asia Population* Population
1 Myanmar 48 95%
DR of
2 Cango 62 94%
3 Tanzania 41 94%
4 Ethiopia 77 93%
5 Bangladesh 143 88%
6 Kenya 33 83%
7 India 836 72%
8 Pakistan 172 72%
9 Nigeria 104 67%
10 Indonesia 124 54%
These are out of country's population only and as per
data shared officially!!
Source: Special early excerpt of World Energy Outlook 2011 as per IEA
When a doctor hesitates to reach out country side whose services are in dire need, what
about any other professional to reach out country side for providing energy, water, etc.
For this very fundamental reason, country side still depend on nature as we call
But the crux in the later part unlike in the first part is, energy for cooking, lighting
(fire), entertainment (play), comfort (clean air) aspiration needs are yet to be properly
met. Having understood about these, we should now focus on
3. Recognise both good and bad practices and then share with masses as they can learn
from those and improve accordingly
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What can be de-centralised:-
1. Spread:- Encourage more and more decentralized energy conversion devices meant for
individuals/groups
2. Support:- With local credit through Co-op society, Co-op Bank, MFI, RRB, Commercial
Bank
1. Solar
a. Electricity
2. Motion
a. Electricity
3. Biomass
a. Electricity
4. Waste-Biogas, etc
a. Heat-Cooking
b. Electricity
5. Wind
a. Electricity
6. Hydro
a. Electricity
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5(or 6) simple steps that we can follow to ensure sustainable journey of energy for all:-
1. Start switching (using) induction stove that run on electricity...I know that some
of us will immediately complain about smart power-cuts during wee-hours of the day
and they can use biomass stove as back-up for all our bed-coffee or breakfast kind
of needs. A word of caution, we should totally stop use of any burning of
fuel/consumption of electricity for hot water meant for bathing(we will discuss
about the right solution in the next step)
2. Just switch on the sun by using solar water heater to get hot water for all our
bathing needs. Again a word of caution before implementing the same is get your
needs surveyed by a professional, check water quality, construction/modifications
in the over head tank to support natural flow of water rather than using
circulation pump for every damn thing, etc!
3. Now 2 or 3 more family members (children, wife and husband-since we are part of a
selfish nuclear family concept, which is another side effect of globalisation!) can
come out of home and leave for school/work by using Electric Vehicles(EVs), in case
Public Transport is a second option (If anybody still believes myths such as
electric vehicles neither have nice speeds nor can use for long distances, etc,
then they can cry at themselves for being still in B.C time period as why cant we
question cartels/corporate by showing on how Trains of Indian Railways, the worlds
largest railway system have been running on DC electricity so fast! Do you know
that just by paying charge for 1unit of electricity, you can drive an electric 2-
wheeler for 70km! Unbelievable! Not just this Delhi Metro Ex.MD E Sridharan says
The cost of carrying a passenger per kilometre in a metro system is one-sixth or
one-fifth the cost of a road transport system . A rail-based system is fast, viable,
safe and comfortable in an interview, which can be read at
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/e-sreedharan-delhi-metro-interview/1/21128.html . Not just this
look at great speeds of Metro Rail in Kolkata/Delhi/Bangalore which run on DC
electricity? We just need more Sridharan kind of personnel to realise the full
potential of EVs as the most preferred transport mode! Indians can visit
http://www.evfuture.com Indias largest electric vehicle portal and global citizens can visit
http://www.evfuture.org for switching over to EVs) If not convinced then at least learn from
Bangladesh than from developed world on using EVs for most of their public
transport even in upcountry as we have noticed in the content of the 1st page of
this book! If we dont question our system, we might be even paying for incoming
calls of our mobile! If we dont question our systems, we might never reap the
benefits of number portability in mobile, bank account, insurance! I am very sorry
to say when tiny countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Srilanka have been reaping the
benefits of VOIP Phone, 4G Technology, poor IDEAT (IT savvy, Disco savvy,
Entertainment savvy by excess exposure to TV & Movie, Alcohol savvy, Tax savvy)
Indians still digest 2g/3G scams! Start questioning corporates and stop questioning
politicians as we hardly come out to vote a good politician!
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4. Now look at what farmer/parents/children or youth should do at farm-land/work
place/educational institution(in rural for farming/non-farming income generation
activity/ education and in urban for non-farming income generation
activity/education)
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me and I will share a nice electricity air pollution while
business plan which can not commuting, please
only improve your TRPs but 4. Use solar/wind ensure that you at
also can make you and your electricity as least use Net-book /
employers rich! electricity source/ at Tablet PC! I dont
least as back-up understand why still
A word of caution: No body source and please ask some bosses maintain a
can satisfy the greedy! your head to meet me desktop and laptop to
along with his CA if show-off unless and
he/she needs to be until they are so
convinced on shrewd fascinated with a wife
investment logic, etc at home and with
myths which they feel a/more girl friend(s)
still exist in tapping at work place!
such energy sources!
3. Stop Light Pollution
A word of caution: No body and start using
can satisfy the greedy! natural day-light or
modern day-light as it
fits the budget of
your employer
5. Now look at what farmer/parents/children should do once they are back home!
1. Sit back, relax and 1. Reduce watching games 1. Sit back, relax and
enjoy nice sun-set and start playing enjoy by spending time
games(When a parent with family especially
2. Use LED lights, watch can find a separate children
LED TV, use DC Ceiling room for children, why
Fan consuming not many parents 2. Use LED lights, watch
electricity generated together can at least LED TV, use DC Ceiling
from solar / wind / find a playground for Fan consuming
hydel energy-Do you you-Start demanding electricity generated
know that expenditure such as your parents from solar / wind /
of solar home LED demand for more perks hydel energy
lights are equal from their bosses who
3. Say good bye to night
to/less than what some can find horse-race
life unless and until
farmers spend on course, golf course,
you would like to see
kerosene in remote spacious club,etc)
your photo, name with
villages of the
2. Watch news on TV/Read a story like the one
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developing world? good ePapers for of some of our
improving your GK and bollywood heroes who
channels meant for had been arrested for
children in developing hit & run cases as
countries involve more they drink & drive
fights than killing some of those
morale!(Hope you will innocent/poor guys
do something for sleeping on pavements
having seen the TV AD
of THE HINDU wherein a 4. You may enjoy during
kid could tell whether week-ends along with
Aishawarya Roy had family-Please be aware
male/female child but that there is piracy
could not tell who is in private life but
our PM) not privacy!
6. Last but not least for those house-wives who will gun at me for not envisaging
anything in the above for them, I will ask Sri Mantena Satyanarayana Raju garu to
keep them engaged in his TV shows if they are in house and in his awareness camps
if they are out on streets leaving some time for them to shop, which is also very
essential to take care the needs of their family in true/good spirit and also to
ensure good business for the entrepreneurs! Ideal house wives can do weekly
shopping, which might even save more energy and more money too!