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Pico Power is The Key to Sustainable and Affordable Energy Issues
Who needs big - and often bad - energy projects. There is a whole other range of relatively inexpensive possibilities for rural communities and urbanites who'd move back to nature 'if only'. Discussion about sustainable, affordable energy issues is a mixture of hand wringing about big dams, privatised electricity, and such, and plans to harness alternative and renewable energy sources energy such as biogas and hydropower. But while the former is one of the few initiatives that works on a truly local community level, hydropower projects, held out as the great hope, are often so big as to be beset by kafuffles local and international. Yet, there are developments taking place in the field of community-run and owned power generation, as well as devices to use this power efficiently that ought to inspire scientists, aid workers and entrepreneurs in India to think outside the lines set down by bureaucracy and power politics.
Pico energy is, quite simply, a very small amount of power (as little as 5kW or even under), usually produced by a miniature hydropower set-up, or by harnessing solar and less often wind energy. For people in small rural communities this is a godsend; they often live perforce off-grid because state-run electricity has simply not reached them, or because it's too expensive. The infrastructure required to generate this amount of hydropower costs far less than a standard micro hydro plant (100 kW and above), the technology is fairly simple and safe to learn and use, and villages have even been known to recycle materials from old buildings, wood, and water mills to create cheaper housing, reservoirs, pipes, etc. Small, poor communities can pool together resources to initially build a system with very small capacity and learn the technical skills needed to maintain the plant, thus retaining control of the resource. Solar pico power systems help deal with the differences in terrain as well as seasonal fluctuations in water levels. They're already in frequent use around the world in different forms, on RVs and campsites for electricity, on rucksacks to charge batteries and laptops in remote areas, and in more primitive forms in households for electricity as well as hot water. Photovoltaic panels are becoming cheaper, while batteries and inverters, the other major components of the systems, are a less significant cost. Wind power and pedal power too have been used effectively to generate electricity on a tiny scale by development projects and expeditions.
Okay, you say, but what is the point really of a tiny amount of energy? Everything, if you have the right devices with which to use it. Biogas, an excellent example of small-scale sustainable energy, can be used to cook on smoke-less stoves, which means that the pulmonary health of women and small children in particular improves tremendously. However, it doesn't solve the problem of light. In 1997 Nichia, a Japanese company developed a highly rugged, long-lasting White Light Emitting Diode (WLED) that with a 1 W input was twice as luminous as a 25 W incandescent lightbulb. David Irvine-Halliday, a Canadian scientist and traveller at the University of Calgary, found this the perfect application to use with pico power generation systems to light up mountain villages in Nepal. A 1W WLED isn't just brighter than a conventional lightbulb, it also lasts 100 times longer. From there on it's easy to design electric lanterns and torches with multiple WLEDs that can be switched on completely or partially.
Experience shows that in homes where electric lights are introduced there is a revolution of sorts. Children study more, and more efficiently if, the chores of the day done, they have enough light to study after dark. Household safety improves, as well as safety along rural trails, if people have a torch with rechargeable batteries that they can carry. In the Himalaya, where houses have tiny, high windows to keep out the cold - and also unfortunately light, families, on getting a single light bulb, commonly notice how much the cleanliness in their houses leaves to be desired. Three years after Light Up the World started in Nepal, from the Himalaya to forgotten coastal villages in Sri Lanka, from Kenya to Mexico, more and more villages are benefiting from this perfect combination of pico power and appropriate devices.
Eventually, a community could make its power system literally pay for itself. In countries such as Nepal, where alternative and independent electricity generation is slowly being regulated and legislated to benefit communities, a few villages have tried their hand at micro hydro projects, effectively acting as private power companies, and selling to the state-owned grid the excess they generate. In India these cutting edge but low-cost, high impact technologies remain infrequently used because every initiative, even individual or community, needs to liaise with the State Electricity Board and go through the same time-consuming, expensive, and bewildering licensing process as a private power company. Surely the more such truly inventive and low-cost solutions are offered to government bodies and NGOs, the more likely a change in policy is. It's time for the creative scientific types to get working.
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