IEA Publication: Light's Labour lost

The International Energy Agency has a new publication on policy for energy efficient lighting. this is a good step forward as the entire lighting pie is analyzed and solutions including use of HB LED's for lighting is concidered and projected. Some extracts below.
When William Shakepeare wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost he would have used light from tallow candles at a cost (today) of £12,000 per million-lumen hours. The same amount of light from electric lamps now costs only £2! But today’s low-cost illumination still has a dark side. Globally, lighting consumes more electricity than is produced by either hydro or nuclear power and results in CO2 emissions equivalent to two thirds of the world’s cars.

A standard incandescent lamp may be much more efficient than a tallow candle, but it is far less efficient than a high-pressure sodium lamp. Were inefficient light sources to be replaced by the equivalent efficient ones, global lighting energy demand would be up to 40% less at a lower overall cost. Larger savings still could be realised through the intelligent use of controls, lighting levels and daylight.

But achieving efficient lighting is not just a question of technology; it requires policies to transform current practice. This book documents the broad range of policy measures to stimulate efficient lighting that have already been implemented around the world and suggests new ways these could be strengthened to prevent light’s labour’s from being lost.

Innovation alert :Greener Semiconductors

A new technique that replaces high temprature oxidation in silicon wafer fabrication with a room temprature process using UV light @ 126 nm wavelength, promises to revolutionize IC fabrication and bring down the power consumed for the same.

The BBC reports that
"The team from University College London used low temperature, ultraviolet lamps to make silicon dioxide, a vital component of almost all modern chips.
At the moment, chip makers use energy intensive furnaces, heated to more than 1000C, to manufacture the material.he new technique operates at room temperature and so requires less power and resources."

Predicting the solar harvest

The New Scientist has the following report.
The state of the Sun's atmosphere has been predicted with unprecedented accuracy five days in advance, using some of the world's fastest computers. The simulation lays the foundation for better forecasts of hazardous magnetic storms around Earth.

Clouds of gas that escape from the Sun in events called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can fry satellites and knock out power grids on Earth. The storms also pose a radiation hazard to astronauts.

But predicting these storms is difficult – not every CME that heads our way triggers a storm. The key factor appears to be the alignment of the cloud's magnetic field. If it is lined up with Earth's magnetic field, the local space weather is likely to be calm, while if it is lined up the opposite way, powerful magnetic storms can result. Now, researchers led by Zoran Mikic of the company Science Applications International in San Diego, California, US, have devised a sophisticated computer model based on observations of magnetic activity on the Sun's surface, or photosphere. This activity shapes the Sun's wispy outer atmosphere, or corona, where the eruptions of gas originate.

They improved on simpler versions of their model by including a more accurate simulation of how energy flows through the corona. The new model worked well enough to successfully predict the shape of the entire corona when it became visible in the solar eclipse of 29 March 2006. Normally, the Sun's surface is too bright to directly observe the corona.

While this research is mostly relevant to the high end applications we can also use such data to fine tune solar collectors of different types.

Energy Equations

The professor has a nice article on the geopolitical shifts that are happening around us and the impact on energy consumption. He points out the impact of India and China (especially china) to the global energy calculus. The regional integration of S.America will be another blow for the monroe doctrine and with India and China out the Kyoto protocol till 2012 we should see some good geo-political action this decade. Better to get closer to china the only unintimidatable and least agressive major power ! A memorable quote in typical chomsky style "Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in their SUVs in traffic gridlock." gives us a clear picture of where the root of the problem lies! Consumption driven economics...without a ecological and ethical counter force.

World Cup Goes Carbon Neutral

The World Cup is carbon neutral for the first time this year, despite the dirty energy used and air miles clocked up by both fans and players, thanks to FIFA's use of carbon offset schemes.

By funding a green energy project in Africa and buying up carbon credits to compensate for emissions from German coal-burning power stations, vehicles, and airplanes generated by the event, organizers hope to erase its impact on the earth's climate.

FIFA is funding a project in South Africa that will see coal-fired boilers at Letaba Citrus Farm, South Africa, replaced by biomass boilers fuelled by woodchips from a nearby sawmill.

Mary Shelly section : Frankenstien rats.. brains

A team led by Yael Hanein of Tel Aviv University in Israel used 100-micrometre-wide bundles of nanotubes to coax rat neurons into forming regular patterns on a sheet of quartz.

The neurons cannot stick to the quartz surface but do bind to the nanotube dots, in clusters of about between 20 and 100. Once attached, these neuron bundles are just the right distance from one another to stretch out projections called axons and dendrites to make links with other clusters nearby. Axons and dendrites carry electrical signals between neurons. The electrical activity of the neural network can easily be measured because carbon nanotubes conduct electricity and so can function as electrodes.

Existing methods for growing networks of neurons cannot produce such neat patterns and clean links between cells. This is because neurons are normally deposited on surfaces that do not prevent them from growing out of ordered clusters onto projections, which makes for a messier network. This is not a problem for Hanein's group. "There is no chance of the cells migrating outside of there," she says. (I would sure hope so :)

Utilicom : The indian perspective

Thomas F. Anglero has a perspective on his blog on the emergence of the utilicom. This is also covered in Rajesh Jain's blog. The real meat of the article is Anglero's very perceptive analysis of who controls the network.
"The average utility company has been in the same business as the average Telecom company in regards to providing a necessary service that by its very nature creates an addictive "dependency", has established a personal (trust) relationship which is recorded in a database with information about "you", and financially prospering by keeping a low-key profile to a very high margin business. The utility companies have the "right-of-ways" and easements directly into the bedrooms of each one of us and lie higher on the totem-pole of http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifBig Business by controlling "the" most important element in Telecom...Energy!

If a Telecom company wanted to teach a nation a lesson about its importance, it could shut-down its network but subscribers would counter by subscribing to another competitor. If an Energy company shut-down its electrical grid, no-Telecom network would function, none of our modern and necessary conveniences would function, almost nothing, life doesn't stop - it reverses.

The Energy companies are the Poseidons of Utilicom. While Telecom companies focus on M&A of each other, the Energy companies will allow this to transpire because its a waste of capital and is clearly unnecessary. This was proven last week by Orange UK (France Telecom) who threw-down the gauntlet on broadband DSL and unlimited nationwide calling by practically giving it away (about $9 USD) to anyone willing to be an Orange UK mobile subscriber."

For India this is a great opportunity to understand and get the right infrastrcture (physical, social and political) in place. Given the power scenario and all the hype about how telecom penetration in india will change the way things are done the ground reality is that cellular providers are unable to setup cell sites even on secondary state highways due to lack of power infrastructure. But there are solutions available today, as can be seen here and here.
The point here is that while today its remote sites and bad terrain that demand such solutions, this is going to be the dominant means by which telecom and communication are going to spread in developing economies like india. distributed power generation and consumption are the way to go. Word in the grapevine is that Reliance is trying hard to get PV based cell sites up and the only issues today are the 24x7x365 power levels required rather any technical hurdles.So bulk of the world population will have telecom outside the control of the Utilcom's. At least till they find a way to tax sunlight and then privatize it !

CDM : Bridging the gap

An interesting company that is focused on creating CDM projects and funds itself and the stakeholders from the CER credits generated. CER India Pvt. Ltd. has been set up as a company to partner with grassroots groups, NGOs, people's organizations, Gram Panchayats, etc., assist them in developing and financing CDM Projects, and in the monitoring and sale of carbon credits that are generated. The company has partnered with ADATS and a grassroots organization Coolie Sangha to do some pioneering work in Bagepalli (Kolar Dist.) on dry land development that has a CER bonus. They are currently working on a number of CDM initiatives in the areas of rural lighting, bio-gase etc.

New optical system for increased LED efficiency

Edmund Optics, Inc. has launched an illumination delivery technology, EOS, a next generation approach to increasing illumination brightness in LEDs. EOS delivery technology essentially reinvents LEDs, ultimately making them more useful to a wider variety of markets.

“This discovery has created a tremendous gain in power and lifetime for LEDs. As the EOS technology flows to market, scientists and engineers will be able to utilized this revolutionary technology to replace the majority of quartz halogen bulbs over the next several years,” said John Stack, president and COO. “We are certain that this innovative optical solution will be applicable to future developments at the source/die level.”

The new EOS technology will create new opportunities for the use of LEDs in automotive headlamps, scientific instrument lighting, infrared military illuminators, surgical headlamps and portable projector systems.

“EOS technology is used to direct energy from the LED chip with unprecedented efficiency and unsurpassed uniformity at the target. The 150 watt quartz halogen bulbs typically last 1,000 hours. Initial testing results indicate that with the new optical design, the EOS transformed LED will be at least two to five times brighter than quartz halogen, lasting 20 to 50 times longer,” said Chris Cummings, R&D engineer at Edmund Optics.

LED technologies have continued to address the brightness issue by optimizing materials and the manufacturing process. These approaches still fall short of the rigorous brightness requirements, and therefore end users persist in driving the chip harder, increasing power to achieve a better result. Unfortunately, this method decreases the lifetime of the LED, one of its primary advantages over quartz halogen.

Recognizing this problematic balance between driving the chip and LED lifetime, Edmund Optics sought an unconventional approach to the brightness problem. “Our approach was to go back to the fundamental limits of physics; then use building blocks to come up with a radically new, yet simple and elegant optical solution,” said Samuel Sadoulet, director of engineering.

Edmund Optics developed a patent-pending, optical technology that when used in conjunction with an LED, more effectively directs the light into a tightly focused and manageable bundle of light, minimizing any thermal concerns that impact the life of the chip. The financial drawback of using an LED has been eliminated.

HB LED outlook

Fueled by growth in emerging applications such as illumination, automotive headlamps and backlighting for LCD monitors and screens, the high-brightness LED market is expected to double in size to more than $8 billion worldwide over the next five years, according to one of the leading forecasters of the LED marketplace. At the same time, the dramatic growth that has come in recent years from the use of high-brightness LEDs in cell phones is leveling off amidst saturation in mobile appliance applications.

These are the findings of Robert Steele of Strategies Unlimited, given in his keynote address at the annual Strategies in Light conference, held recently in San Francisco. Other highlights of his firm’s annual review and outlook of the high-brightness LED market included:

* Overall, it grew by only 8 percent to $4.0 billion in 2005. This shows a dramatic shift from the 37 percent growth in 2004, and the average growth from 2001 to 2004 was even higher at 46 percent. Even so, most of the LED applications showed significant growth since last year and mobile handsets grew faster than expected, resulting in a lower handset LED decline than was anticipated, said Steele.

* For HB LED suppliers the revenue growth was mixed, showing high and low numbers varying from company to company. The excess capacity for HB LEDs led to severe pricing pressure for low-end products like keypad backlights. Prices also declined for higher performance HB LED products, but not as severely.

* For the high-power packages, growth was up 78 percent to $230 million, while standard package market grew only 4 percent and the multichip and high-current grew 12 to 13 percent. The main applications in 2005 for high-power packages include illumination, traffic signals and the fastest growing – camera flash for mobile phones.

Climate change: Tempratures hit the roof

The earth is apparently the hottest it has ever been in the last 400 years. And maybe even longer. For all but the most recent 150 years, the academy scientists relied on "proxy" evidence from tree rings, corals, glaciers and ice cores, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments, boreholes and other sources. They also examined indirect records such as paintings of glaciers in the Alps.

Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years.

Contrarian View: How eco-friendly are bio-fuels ?

George Monbiot has this hard hitting view on bio-fuels. In fact he calls them "Worse than fossil fuels". While the solutions may seem luddite to most of the population, there is an essential truth in the view that he takes. Unfortunately the Genie does not go back into the bottle so we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Worth a serious read though. Monbiot's other recent atricle on the Omega 3 food chain and its impact on human intelligence is also worth a read. Looks like those food fads (Eat fish and become brainy) had some basis after all :)

1328 km/l : Efficacy of your next car ?

While the search for alternate fuels goes on, the fossil brigade is not resting. A UBC team has designed a futuristic-looking, single-occupancy vehicle won top prize at a recent international competition, marking the UBC team’s fourth win in as many years.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle. The UBC design, which required the driver to lie down while navigating it, achieved 3,145 miles per US gallon (1328 km/l : 0.074 litres/100 km) -- equivalent of Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon (3.79 litres) of gas -- costing less than $5 (Rs 225) at the pump.Université Laval (Que.) took second place this year with a score of 1,823 mpg (770 km/l). Other teams represented University of Windsor, University of California, Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, Pennsylvania State University, and the Delhi College of Engineering.

Cree announces 131 lm/W white LED

Looks like the industry is marching ahead on improving white LED efficacy much faster than predicted. Cree has announced a 20mA EZBrite platform that has been certified at 131 lm/W. This is a huge leap for white LED's at large. While the device is a .29 mm lab prototype, it now means that commercial devices will exceed 90 lm/W almost a year before it was predicted.

Ashden Award for Dr Sugarcane

Dr Anand Karve, winner of the Ashden Award for Renewable Energy, has developed ways of harnessing agro-waste into fuel. Karve heads the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute which has developed pioneering seed and irrigation techniques to help farmers.Karve got the award for his remarkable breakthrough in converting sugarcane leaves, generally thrown away or burned after harvest, into fuel.

A sprightly 65-year-old scientist, Karve has a PhD in botany from a German university. He, and a few other like-minded scientists and technicians, founded ARTI in April 1996 at an age when most people are settling down to lead a `retired' life.

ARTI started with the objective of `developing, popularising and commercialising innovative rural technologies' to improve the quality of life and standard of living of the rural residents of India. "If people have enough employment opportunities in rural areas why would they migrate to the cities?" Karve asks.

ARTI's record is impressive. Besides developing renewable energy resources from agricultural waste, it has pioneered nursery techniques to make seeds develop faster, and helped farmers tackle adverse weather conditions. Says Karve: "Farmers lose out on valuable time if they start sowing operations after the monsoon season settles in. If they can sow the seeds in a nursery before the monsoon starts and transplant them once the season is in full swing, they can enhance their produce significantly." ARTI has also developed low-cost, high-humidity chambers to allow seeds to grow better.

The institute has a plant tissue culture laboratory and has constructed a roofless greenhouse at 1/10th the cost of a conventional greenhouse. It has developed a drip-irrigation technique that prevents water wastage and a transportable wheelbarrow, a low-cost water tank and a bakery -- all with the sole purpose of helping villagers.

But it was Karve's work in developing fuel from sugarcane waste that won him accolades and the Ashden Award. The idea took root when Karve's daughter, Priyadarshini, was looking out for a subject for her Master's thesis. She tried converting sugarcane leaves into charcoal and Karve immediately saw the enormous potential in the idea.
Initially Karve didn't meet with much success. But when he put the leaves into a retort, or a container with a lid, where they were starved of oxygen, he was able to come up with charcoal.

Thus Karve found use for the 4.5 million-odd tonnes of sugarcane leaves in Maharashtra. "These leaves have no nutritional value and are difficult to decompose. So they are simply burned and this causes pollution," he says. Karve set up a kiln to char the leaves and convert them into smoke-free char briquettes that could be used as a fuel in rural as well as urban homes.

Besides drastically reducing the fuel costs of an average urban family, producing char briquettes also earns the family an additional income.

Dr Karve is enthusiastic about the Indian government's decision to introduce Gasohol, a five per cent blend of ethanol and petrol. Ethanol can be extracted from sugarcane. "Now the government should increase the percentage of ethanol in petrol and also allow the use of the sugarcane crop in making ethanol," he says.

Karve thinks methane is a better fuel option. Like ethanol, it can be extracted from agricultural waste and its calorific value is higher than that of liquefied petroleum gas.

Karve's journey has not always been smooth. He has had to face his share of social problems. For instance, when he sought the help of the scavenger caste to collect leaves for money, their leader flatly refused. "You educate your children in the best of schools and colleges and want our children to remain scavengers?" said the man.

Dr Karve, grandson of the legendary social reformer Maharishi Dhondo Keshav Karve, has learnt to work around these social pitfalls. His work in rural areas is designed to open a new chapter in rural entrepreneurship, a move that will not only boost rural incomes but will also discourage the rural poor from migrating to urban slums.

Article Credit : InfoChange News & Features

Shuji Nakamura wins Millennium Technology Prize

Slashdot has a report that University of California professor Shuji Nakamura, the japanese inventor of the bright green, white and blue GaN LEDs and a blue laser, has been awarded the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize. While blue LEDs are considered cool and thus needful things by most nerds, Nakamura adapted his blue LEDs to make a blue laser in the mid 90s. The next generation optical storage formats, HD-DVD and BluRay, are of course both based on blue laser. Also, his white LEDS need far less energy than normal incandescent lamps and can thus provide plenty of opportunity for energy-saving in the industrialized world. But probably the most significant future application for Shuji Nakamura's invention comes in the form of sterilizing drinking water, since the the water purification process can be made cheaper and more efficient with the use of ultraviolet LEDs. This can improve the lives and health of tens of millions people in developing countries.

As people working on LED lighting we are doubly proud of the professori. Our business model is after all based on Gallium Nitrite.

Hakwing gives up on global warming

In a recent lecture british astrophysicist and general super guru Stephen Hakwing seems to have given up hope that we can clean up the mess that we have created. To quote the professor "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

It's interesting to note that his opinions on why we need to spread out of the earth are all based on threats we create ourselves. I dont see meteorites scaring Hawkings! He should know being an astrophysicist.
So its official, the reason for our extinction is more likely to be something we do rather than getting hit by comets :)

Limiting Factors: Mips per Watt

One measure that the IT industry has reached a significant milestone in performance maturity is the recent excitement on performance per watt. Clearly this indicates that mainstream users of IT have dropped out of the faster-is-better mode and moved to price-performance ratios in deciding on the hardware that they will buy. But we have a problem here. There is tremendous variation starting at the basic microprocessor, memory, peripherals et al. There is *no standard industry* benchmark for this important metric. Much like the lighting industry goes on about lumens per watt, expect to see computations per watt being quoted on complete systems. And just as in lumens per watt (efficacy in the lighting context) the quoted efficacy figures for computing are bound to confuse rather than clarify. System integrators will have to evolve these metrics in markets where availability of power is the limiting factor in IT expansion.

This assumes importance in countries like india, where we will need the most energy efficent devices to take the IT revolution to the hinderland. This article clearly shows how power is everything for a datacenter or IT setup. Our prediction is that we are going to see completely solar/wind/biomass powered data centers and telecom infrastructure and computing devices take over the volume market over the next decade. This article examines DC power for datacenters, all its findings are directly applicable to a PV type setup.The only issues now are the cost of setting up the power infrastructre not the technical bits of making PV compatible devices. A further prediction is that the innovator here will be government departments trying to implement e-governance systems in such locations.

Imagine this scenario.

Nodal/Village data centers with 5 KW PV or Wind generation, powered by ultra efficient Linux/BSD servers connected by 2 KW broadband wireless telecom nodes to 25W thin clients at homes that have LED/LCD driven displays. This setup with about 10 -15 KW generation can serve about 200- 500 households. The home computing client can be a gateway for data, voice, entertainment and education. One PV panel, one screen per home. The whole thing is doable with today's technology. Where is transmeta ? Where is CK Prahalad ?

NZ firm makes bio-diesel from sewage

A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold.

Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds.

It is believed to be the world's first commercial production of bio-diesel from "wild" algae outside the laboratory - and the company expects to be producing at the rate of at least one million litres of the fuel each year from Blenheim by April.

To date, algae-derived fuel has only been tested under controlled conditions with specially grown algae crops, said spokesman Barrie Leay.

Aquaflow's algae, however, were derived from excess pond discharge from the Marlborough District Council's sewage treatment works. Algae take most chemicals out of sewage, but having too many of them taints the water and produces a foul smell.

Creating fuel from the algae removes the problem while producing useful clean water, said Mr Leay. The clean water can then be used for stock food, irrigation and, if treated properly, for human consumption.

Mr Leay said the process could also benefit dairy farmers and food processors as the algae also thrive in those industries' waste streams.

And unlike some bio-fuel sources which require crops to be specially grown - using more land, fuel, chemicals and fertilisers - the algae already exist extensively.

To get the fuel, the algae are processed into a pulp before lipid oils are extracted to be turned into bio-diesel.

OLED limits stretched

Osram Opto-Semiconductors, Inc. has successfully demonstrated a white organic light emitting diode (OLED) with a record efficiency of 25 lumens per watt, the highest known efficiency achieved to date for a polymer-based white OLED. The 25 LPW cool-white-emitting device was produced by applying a standard external inorganic phosphor to Osram's record-breaking blue-emitting phosphorescent polymer device with a peak luminous efficacy of 14 LPW.

White LED's overtake CFL efficacy

Novel chip design and the balance of multiple interrelated design parameters have enabled Cree, Inc.'s Santa Barbara Technology Center to demonstrate white LEDs with efficacies greater than 65 lumens per watt at 350 mA. The results are particularly significant because they were achieved with a pre-production prototype chip using the same package used in Cree's commercially available XLamp® 7090 high power LED, rather than a laboratory device XLamp® 7090 high power LED
This achievement is based on improved output of the primary blue emitting chip, which was combined with acommercially available yellow phosphor. The results are on par with some compact fluorescent lighting systems and up to 10 times as efficient as incandescent sources.

Cree's achievement is part of a three-year project focused on demonstrating that existing white LED technology could be successfully scaled up (in terms of electrical input/optical output power) to levels suitable for general illumination applications, with superior energy efficiency. This goal requires significant improvements in such diverse areas as chip efficiency, optical design, and thermal management.

The holy grail of LED lighting has been the core efficacy metric beating other white lighting systems. This is hapenning and is a matter of time before the technology is commoditized. We are predicting the the efficacy with go up to more than 90 lm/W by the end of 2007.

Ford Launches CCP

Ford Motor Company and TerraPass have announced "Greener Miles, a program offering Ford vehicle owners the opportunity to offset the climate impact of their driving through the support of projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Through Greener Miles drivers can calculate the amount of CO2 emissions they generate in one year of driving by visiting terrapass. Customers then have the opportunity to purchase an offset that supports the production of renewable clean energy from wind or dairy farm methane. This pilot program gives customers a simple way to be voluntary, active participants in addressing the challenges of climate change.

Read more here

Gas from Iran

The Dawn reports that India may opt out of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipe line and instead opt for Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India as the prefered route. Clearly this is the 'quid-pro-quo' that is being spoken about by the US polititians. Appears that the great game and coercive energy politics is the way to go. I dont see the sense it makes from the Indian perspective, given the potential for nuclear generation.

D.E.S.I Power

Desipower is an innovative company focused on Alternative power generation in biomass rich rural areas across india.The brain child of Dr.H.N.Sharan the innovation is in the business model that involves local people in the process and thus provides employment and energy where it is most required. They already have aboue 30 plants across india including a 500 KW biomass based plant in Karnataka. More details are available here.

Shape of things to come - Dynamic pricing

Power companies in north america are now offering power at different rates based on load and peak demand. It is cheaper to consume power at off peak hours. This has led to gadgets that chanrge their internal batteries when the tarrif is lower and let you use it normally. The device, called GridPoint Protect, is the size of a small file cabinet and connects to the circuitbreaker panel. (The company also offers a lower-capacity version designed for homes, which costs $10,000.) A built-in computer powered by a Pentium chip will make intelligent purchase decisions, buying when prices are low, then storing the electricity for later use. That will make it possible to run your company during the workday with cheaper electricity that you purchased at 3 A.M.
Sounds familiar ? Every indian who can afford it has a UPS that does pretty much the same except that there is no diffrential tarrif and hence no intelligence required for the system.

sunlight concentrator from MIT

MIT reports that they have a new technique to concenterate sunlight using holograms. The main limitation of solar power right now is cost, because the crystalline silicon used to make most solar photovoltaic (PV) cells is very expensive. One approach to overcoming this cost factor is to concentrate light from the sun using mirrors or lenses, thereby reducing the total area of silicon needed to produce a given amount of electricity. But traditional light concentrators are bulky and unattractive -- less than ideal for use on suburban rooftops. Read more here.

The rise of the mutant radioactive wolves

An interesting fallout (no pun intended :) of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown accident has been the return of abundant wild life to the area. The BBC reports that wolves and bears seem to have returned in large numbers. The article notes that The animals are radioactive but otherwise healthy !!! Life seems to have found a way.. though the idea of a mutant radioactive russian wolf may be too attractive for Hollywood to passover.

Limiting factors: Lunar Exploration

The US has announced ambitions plans to create a lunar outpost that will be a waystation in the exploration of Mars. Some details are here.
The crucial questions are how will they power it and where is the water. Human activity is constrained by the available water. The power source will have to be solar energy, but the moon has a peculiar problem in that except for the poles there are 14 days of sunlight followed by 14 days of darkness. The lunar "day" is 672 hours with 336 hours of sunlight followed by a 336 hour "night". Designing these solar power systems will be a magnificent challenge. The good bit is that the spin-off's of the technologies thus developed can be applied on planet earth to enhance our solar harvest..

The mathematics of energy

The physical universe is a lossy place. Most energy conversions are terribly wasteful in the scale the universe works on. The earth is a solar driven planet and probably consumes 0.0000000000001 % (I made up this number and it is probably an overestimate by a factor of a few billion) of the sun's output to function as a living planet. As small bits of self organized carbon living in a micro-energy system within this lossy macro-energy regime we don't have the luxury of using a fraction of the harvested energy and dispensing with the rest.

The key issues hindering PV adoption today are the conversion efficiencies and hence cost per watt. After all with the possible exception of geo-thermal energy, it can be argued that all forms of energy in this planet (Coal, Oil, Wind, Tidal, Solar et al) are derivatives of solar energy. All we are trying to do is to use the solar energy directly rather than wait for millions of years for the trees to grow, get converted to coal and burn it to produce electricity. I guess the term 'investment efficacy' will be appropriate in this context as the PV index which needs to be raised. The theme of this monograph will therefore be on strategies on raising the investment efficacy of PV and the downstream applications or what is more appropriately the solar application eco-system. Generation of energy is not an end in itself. There is a specific function that the energy is used for. With PV, Lighting seems to be by far the biggest application.Let me start by defining three basic rules of play.

1. The investment efficacy of any electrical system is a sum of all the efficacies at play.
2. Efficacy of a system can be raised by either a physics solution or a financial solution.
3. There are many ways to skin the cat. (More on this aspect in a future followup)

Having defined the basic universe in terms of its physics, the facts and the possible solutions to this problem can be stated and analyzed as below.

Level 1:
A BOM for a typical power system has

1. PV modules - 12- 15 % efficiency in conversion of radiant energy to electricity.
2. Charge controllers - 60 % efficiency in regulating and charging battery with input current.
3. Battery bank - 80 % efficiency in charge and discharge cycles
4. Inverter (optional) - 60 - 85 % efficiency depending power factor
5. Wires, switches and connectors - 95 % efficiency in conduction

As per convention, the average solar constant at sea level is about 1kW/m^2.
The typical setup illustrated above will generate the following

Assuming a system operating voltage of 12 V and a PV collector of 1 m^2

Output at PV module = 15% of 1 KW = 150 W
Output at Charge controller = 60 % of 150Wp = 90W
Output at battery terminals = 80 % of 90Wp = 72 W
Output at device (wire load) = 95 % of 72 Wp = 68.5W

In the collection and utilization of a potential of 1KW the average figure of usable electricity appears to be 69W ! The above calculation is simplistic and illustrates a typical rather than a best case. However it illustrates the pain point of PV, material science. With a start of chain efficiency of 15 % this is the best we can do.

The next factor is how efficiently the power thus gathered is used in a lighting context

6. Device efficiency - Incandescent - 5- 10 % , fluorescent - 40- 50 %, LED - 40 - 80 % (colour dependent)

so output of usable light = 6.9 W (Incandescent), 34.5 W (Fluorescent), 55.2 W (LED lamps)

There is no shortage of energy in this world, just shortage of good technologies to boost yields in harvesting and usage. If the best technologies in each of these areas are applied the following will be numbers

Level 2:
The efficiencies described below are possible with today's technology and not just speculation

1. PV modules - 30 - 50 %
2. Charge controllers - 95 %
3. Battery bank - 90 %
4. Inverter (optional) - 90 %
5. Wires, switches and connectors - 98%
6. Device efficiency - 85 % (assuming solid state LED lighting)

The same 1 m^2 harvest of solar energy will now yield 320.5 W of usable lighting. (More actually as we dont need inversion for LED lighting, however we can leave it at this for sake of an apples to apples comparison).

55.2W vs 320.5W !! A 580 % increase in system efficiency. And this is only 32 % total system efficiency (when measured against how much energy we are grabbing from the incident sunlight) which probably compares favorably with an IC engine.

When the efficiency of the system has potential for such dramatic rise, it is clear that an equal and opposite effect will influence the costing of such systems. PV at even 50 % of today's costs will increase adoption by about 10 times. So the effect can be self sustaining.

As this simplistic model demonstrated there is a lot more than can be squeezed out of PV today that can spur adoption. What is required seems to be a concerted effort to increase the efficiencies of all the components in the PV chain including the devices that consume the power. The smart money on PV should logically go after investments in efficiency optimization rather than something totally new. Raising downstream efficiency even in the lamps equates to using less PV per function. As the PV industry competes for raw material with much higher value products (like CPU's or memory chips) the less used for a given application, the better its salability.

VOSPAD - The benchmark for home LED's

Several years ago a german lighting designer started with the doing his pad up with LED's. The results are easier seen than described. Ofcourse LED's have come a long way since this and it is possible to better this with todays devices and reduce the cost. The site itself can be accessed here.

LRC elevator LED lighting

The LRC at NY (also the oldest technical collage in the US) has been testing LED based elevator lighting. The high intensity fixtures used now have a life span of 40,000 hours and consume 45 % less power than the existing lights. LRC hopes to commercialize the design soon.

Jean Paul Freyssinier, an LRC research assistant professor says “LEDs are an ideal light source for elevators because their rugged design can withstand the vibrations and motions of the cabin,” The six LED downlights required a total of 165 watts of electricity, compared with 300 watts for the original incandescent downlights, for an energy savings of 45 percent. The illuminance levels inside the elevator cabin were similar between each type of downlight. As an added benefit, the LED fixtures are expected to last 40,000 hours, or more than four years being on all day, every day. Compared with traditional incandescent fixtures in elevators, which operate between 1,500 and 2,500 hours, LEDs can provide cost savings for replacement and maintenance, says Freyssinier. And because LEDs typically do not fail outright (their light output slowly decreases instead), maintenance crews can plan for relamping, rather than having to respond to lamp failures as they occur.

A survey conducted inside the original and LED-modified elevators showed that passengers ranked the low-profile LED installation as consistently better in terms of visibility, comfort, color and attractiveness of the light.

Business Gyan

All pioneering businesses try to understand what the consumer wants and will pay for. In my own case we have taken opinions from various people who come to us or we meet. While some of the suggestions and feedback have been invaluble, bulk of the feedback is not based on their understanding of what we are actually doing or trying to do. IMHO it is probably a better idea to discard all but the most pertinent suggestions at the risk of discarding some genuine insights. Two quotes that capture this in a nutshell are below

Henry ford:
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse."

Alice (actually Scott Adams who has taught me more management than any MBA course via Dlibert):

What the customers want is better products for free.

Clean water from cow dung- Slingshot

Everyone knows that Dean Kamen is a real creative guy (remember the Segway) who is often far ahead ofthe rest of the pack. A new initiative by him in collaboration with Iqbal Quadir (of Grameen phone fame) aims to provide clean water from cow dung. The solution is a combination of a power plant powered by biomass (cow dung is one of the things that it can burn) and a water purifier powered by it. Trials are on in Bangladesh and the device seems to have an economic model as well.
As ever the innovation is in the execution. Quadir is also a visionary who buys into distributed power as a kind of democratic principle. Some quotes below.
Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place, because then you would create 500,000 entrepreneurs.

"Isn't that better for democracy?" Quadir asks. "We see a shortage of democracy in the world, and we are surprised. If you strengthen the economic hands of people, you will foster real democracy."

Nanomaterials for clean Loo's

Even the most ardent environmentalist wants a clean bathroom and toiled irrespective of the actual process of getting a modern washroom clean. The plethora of chemicals and detergents used, the amount of piped water used are some of the constituents of your toilet cleaning power bills. Looks like the solution is around the corner.

Best Syndication reports:
Researchers from University of New South Wales, Australia, are working on developing a coating that may make cleaning bathrooms less of a chore.

The lead researchers Professor Rose Amal and Professor Michael Brungs of the ARC Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, are hoping to apply a coating of tiny particles of titanium dioxide to keep the toilets clean. Currently the titanium dioxide is being used on outdoor items like self-cleaning windows.

How it works is that ultraviolet light below a specific wavelength causes electrons to excite and this gives the effects of oxidation. This oxidation disinfects better than commercial bleach. It makes it better for sanitation as it is continually cleaning instead of waiting for the janitor.

To further keep the bathroom clean, nanoparticles kill microbes and remove organic compounds. The titanium dioxide contains ‘superhydrophilicity’ which makes it so liquid droplets do not form on the surface. It makes the liquid run off and washes as it drips off.

The researchers are faced with one dilemma for making the titanium dioxide coating to work indoors. The coating is activated by ultraviolet sunlight, and they need to be able to activate the titanium dioxide with indoor lighting. In order to make it work indoors, they are trying to modify the chemical compound by adding other elements like iron or nitrogen so it can use light of a longer wavelength.


Looks like all bathrooms will now have titanium surfaces with UV LED's initiating the cleanup based on occupancy.

Lighting Manufactures for a free and open market.

Patent issues in the LED space have been contentions and have been covered in this blog on several occasions. While genuine innovations can and should be protected, it is emerging that the Patent office is not qulafied to either understand or issue patents in this field. Color Kinetics and other such companies are constantly trying to patent broad concepts that are a kind of theft from the commons due to tons of prior art. An industry alliance has now be formed to take on this menace and protect real innovations from such predatory practices. Such practices will bring in GPL type licenses in this field as well. More details can be had here.
Previous posts that covered patent issues are
Patent Pending
Open standards, patents and society
Patents killing science ?
Small companies fight for a foothold in white LED sector

The art of war : Strategies on energy conservation

Sun Tzu who wrote the "The art of war" starts off by saying that the best general is one who can avoid the war in the first place. Hardly surprising that he was from China. Looks like the Chinese are still blessed with thinkers of the same mould, when you look at the energy conservation stratergies they have adopted. While they are investing heavily in power generation, they are following it up with increasing efficiency in consumption, starting with Lighting.

Silicon Valley's Robert C. Walker observes :

"China will be the first country to adopt the solid-state lighting revolution," Walker says. "You're going to see China first, the rest of Asia second, Europe third and the U.S. last in adopting that technology."

China's government has pressing reasons for embracing solid-state lighting, which in the West is still a fringe technology. Prime among them is the fact that LEDs will consume roughly 50% to 80% less energy than conventional (incandescent and fluorescent) lights. Rapid economic growth is already outstripping China's ability to supply energy. According to Wu Ling, the dynamic former medical doctor who directs the China Solid-State Lighting Alliance, a Beijing nonprofit organization that develops strategy for the government, 12% of electricity currently goes to lighting. Wu estimates that if over the next ten years LEDs were to take 30% of China's lighting market, then the saving would be 58 billion kilowatt-hours per year. She points out that that is almost as much as the yearly output of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest power plant, under construction at a cost of $24 billion.

"Faced with a great shortage of energy, the government will push solid-state lighting," Wu says. And in China when the mandarins want something to happen, they have all sorts of ways of making sure that it does. Top-down strategies include financing, both direct and indirect. Wu expects Beijing's next five-year plan, to be announced at the end of October, to contain a major increase in spending on solid-state lighting R&D at Chinese universities and national institutes (up from the $17 million spent since the project began in January 2003). Wu estimates that $725 million has thus far been invested in China's domestic solid-state lighting industry. Some of this is private investment, but industry insiders believe much of the money has come from government banks in the form of soft loans to LED startups. Regulations--in both positive and negative forms--are another powerful lever. For example, officials can mandate that LEDs be used for certain applications, such as the illumination of tourist landmarks like Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Or, where the codes haven't caught up with technology, authorities can turn a blind eye to early adoption. Our conversations with the renewable energy bodies in India are encouraging but fall short of any real help :)

The Chinese government has also outlawed all non-LED based portable lighting in the mining industry as LED's can save lives dues to reliability.
All this makes one wonder why other developing countries haven't thought this through. Billions of dollars are borrowed and earmarked for power generation. Entire riparian ecosystems and cultures are destroyed to make way for these projects only to waste the power due to lack of vision. Sometimes i wonder if working toward a macro strategy is only possible in enlightened authoritarian setups. The yin yang juxtaposition is most clearly visible between the Asian giants India and china in such matters. Some sort of "Zen and the art of electric lighting". Way to go China!

Political Economics

Why does this ring so true ? ;-)

The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough voters to win the next election.

Look who is talking

The US president, in this annual address to the nation, has called for a reduction in US conusmption of imported oil. The light at the end of the tunnel is apparently something called 'better technology' which will make the oil economy thing of the past. Pardon my cynicism. Some initiatives seem to include

A six-year goal for making the alternative fuel ethanol practical and competitive, and vowed to fund additional research into ways to make ethanol not just from the commonly used corn but also from wood-chips or grasses.

The goal, he said, is to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Critics doubted Bush ever really severed his ties from the oil industry and were skeptical he would put the kind of effort into conservation and alternative-fuel research they say is needed. His previous energy initiatives have had little impact on prices or supplies.

This is like Al Capone making a speech favouring prohibition. The president's connections to the oil industry are well known. While the ethanol factor looks good on paper, fact of the matter is that corn ethanol is a petrochemical based industry and not really renewable like Jethropa oil et al. Some of these factors have been explored here and here.

Open standards, patents and society

Our constant endeavors to create luminary products bring us in contact with others in the space who constantly harp on patents, registered designs and IP accumulation as the key to building value. While we will do what we have to do to grow the company a deeper look at the IP regime and information revolution that make all this necessary is called for.

The structure of a free market economy is fundamentally geared toward demand side. The supply side exists to predict and position functional, economical, socially gratifying products to meet this demand. This implies a surplus economy (enough capital for multiple entities to work at different approaches to the same problem) high purchasing power in the catchment. It also implies the ability to identify or create a need, design, execute ,test and distribute the same choreographed with a marketing blitz and awareness campaign. To me this is sociology at its finest. I sometimes think Kavin Care (of sachet shampoo fame) has better practicing sociologists than the JNU !

In such an economic eco-system abundant and cheap sources of power are a given. So is depth of market and geographical spread. All these factors are more or less natural and could have been found in the Souks, Santhai, Bazaars world over for millennia. The modern twist, a child of the industrial revolution, is the patent or exclusivity right that was created to protect the investments of innovators from the assault of the me-too manufacturers. As mechanized manufacture destroyed the artisan system of manufacture, some other institution had to enter the economy to substitute for the trade secret mechanism provided by the Guild system and to induce capital into the system especially in expensive stuff like open ended domain R&D. The competitive advantage of nations and corporations can be measured in what they are willing to gamble on creating a 'better mouse trap'. As the better mouse trap kills off the current mouse trap (and destroys somebody's business and investment) the system is a race to the bottom unless some protection is granted to the innovator. Hence a patent is a very socialist tool invented to protect innovation from less encumbered capital and in the end social progress in the technological mode.

The key obviously is to protect only true innovation and not create a tool that can be exploited cynically to profit off the innovations of others. This seems to be the current state of affairs due to the complete undermining of the US patent system (and the others as well) by a professional IPR lobby. The recent fiasco with the blackberry demonstrates how the granting of patents for things like software concepts, business models, life forms is retrogade and represents the victory of cowboy capital over the conventional socially bound capital. The GNU movement was all about this. It was indeed prophetic of Richard Stallman to predict this logjam decades earlier. While capital is the engine of civilization, the social context is its foundation. All information cannot be treated as equally patentable and prior art should be well researched before the grant of a patent. The qualitative definition of innovation will continue to dog patents, but ridiculous stuff can easily be culled. Also it is important to have open standards to balance the effect of patents. But for Linux, Microsoft will be much stronger today. We will have more blackberry fiascos.

Fortunately the space that we work in does have a lot of room for patents but mostly in the semiconductor material area (think gallium nitrate level of innovation) and the packaging area. The good part is that the luminary space has enough prior art to keep all but the most sound patents out (though people have tried to patent even heat sinking of LED's in luminaries, which is incidentally a mandatory requirement as per the lamp manufacturers specs :) There will be some genuine innovations in the luminary categorization space as LED's allow new forms of lighting to be conceived by their special characteristics. So while a stable and fair patent regime can genuinely stroke innovation, it is a lot better to have none instead of a flawed system that does the opposite.

Solar telecom solutions

One of the silent revolutions that has been taking place is the penetration of solar PV solutions for the police force. All state police forces have their own wireless radio network that is supposed to work across the state. The same is true of the state owned transport corporations etc. These bodies typically have their own repeating stations to re-transmit the signals across the state. These repeater stations are typically on top of natural elevations (devarayanadurga is a good example near tumkur) where grid power may or may not be available. Further the unreliability of grid power in such locations forces autonomous power generation.
What all this is leading too is that the cops are switching to Solar/Diesel based systems to run the stations. From the information that we have it appears to be very successful and they have to use the DG only during the worst of the monsoons to augment the solar setup. Admirable given the red tape in the system.

Limiting factors: 2nd level factors that no one thinks of

The advent of evacuated glass tube technology in Solar thermal installations got me thinking on the factors that motivated this change from copper. The real reasons for this are actually quite simple. The cost of copper. Copper has become so expensive that companies are looking at any options that can replace it. This got me thinking of how vital copper is and how our entire electrical infrastructure is completely dependant on this element. It appears that most of the industrial processes as well as installations will come to a standstill without copper.
The scientific americal has the following to say
Copper is used in everything from automobiles to ordnance. Copper allows electricity to be generated, transported and conducted to the various outlets in a modern home. Copper is also relatively scarce compared to other metals like iron or aluminum that make up a good portion of the earth itself. So copper serves as an excellent metallic bellwether for potential future resource scarcity, according to a group of researchers who compiled data on its extraction, use, recycling and discard to estimate whether there is enough copper available to make a developed standard of living available to all the world's people. The short answer is: no.


Read the rest here.

London Hospital gets LED floor & wall

A picture tells a thousand words. The tech specs can be found here.

LED driven TV's make their debut

This is the wave of the future. The CRT is being consigned to history. The beauty of these devices is that they are direct digital sets that use micro-mirrors to render the image. Read more here.

Feedback

Greetings Fellow bloggers. I has been several months since i started blogging my thoughts on Energy and Lighting. Would appreciate some feedback and comments on what your thoughts are and any suggestions on the content you would like to see on this blog.
i can be reached on shiv(at)alternate(dot)co(dot)in.

15 tech trends for 2006

Popular Mechanics has a feature article on 15 new concepts in science and technology which will see public action in 2006. Among those included are

Modular Pebble-Bed Reactor : Which will make nuclear reactors cheap to make and a lot safer as core meltdown is not possible.

Nanoparticle Batteries : Which will charge from 0 - 80 % charge in about a minute.

Micro Fuel Cells: That use methanol as fuel and have twice the energy density as Li ion.

Coal Gasification : Which will benefit countries like India and China apart from the US in cleaning up coal generation and make coal generation a environmentally viable technology for a while yet.

are technologies of interest to the energy community. The storage accumalator technologies are getting exciting and will give a tremendous boost to renewable generation in just being more efficient.
The whole article can be read here.

Ion Engine breakthrough

Physorg.com reports The European Space Agency and the Australian National University have successfully tested a new design of spacecraft ion engine that dramatically improves performance over present thrusters and marks a major step forward in space propulsion capability. Read more here.

China marching ahead in renewable energy

Rajesh Jain reports on Chinas plans on renewable generation here.

MNES trendsetter achievements

The march of research on renewable energy in India is slow but steady. This years list of achievements from the MNES site.

Coal powerplants to Plant power !

The term power plant may now have a new twist with a startup focused on generating usable electric power from living trees. This is i guess environmentally and ethically better than chopping them down to burn them for the energ content. While this technology is in its infancy and has many who scoff at it, it still remains a very interesting proposition. Read more here.

Power from green slime

A new end to end technology using Algae, yes the same slimy stuff you find in ponds, is the core of an effort to clean up carbon emissions from power plants, produce bio-diesel and ethanol. Read more here.

Power House: a domestic energy solution

The Deccan herald reports on a new experiment by KREDL in micro-hydel generation from your overhead tank. While this is a low returns solution, it is a bit like a turbo charger, in that it allows part of the energy associated in pumping water to the tank to be recovered from the gravity flow of the water. Should be very useful if the BWSSB and similar water supply corporations can fit this in their area distribution overhead tanks. The power generated should at least keep the tank installation lit. Read more here.

Annual Security FUD fest

A look at this year's CERT OS vulnarability list and the press rants about it. What is clear is that Windoze is as vlunarable as ever and M$ as usual is relying on slanted press coverage to 'creatively reinterepret' the CERT reports to its advantage. Newsforge reports
Everywhere you look in the trade press today, you'll find glowing misrepresentations of US-CERT's latest annual summary of vulnerabilities discovered in 2005. If you take the summary findings at face value, you would likely conclude that Windows -- with 812 reported vulnerabilities -- is a much safer operating system than something called "Unix/Linux," which totaled 2,328. The US-CERT summaries have become the fodder for a FUD festival, and many scribes sympathetic to the Microsoft cause go out of their way to make sure the real picture never emerges.

Read the rest here.

Pumping electricity from the sea.

Slashdot reports that Sea Solar Power Inc., run by three generations of James Hilbert Andersons, has developed a solar power technology that does not fluctuate with the weather, but is available constantly. Their solution is to harness the solar energy stored in the sea by tapping the thermal gradient that exists naturally between the surface and deep waters, using a reverse refrigeration cycle. The modeling and testing done by the Anderson family over three generations since 1962 predicts that the cost of energy generation through this method will be within a price range comparable to nuclear, coal, natural gas, and other contemporary grid power plants. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, was invented in 1881 by a French scientist, Jacques Arsene D'Arsonval. Read more on this interesting technology here.

LED Lighting and disruptive innovations - 2

The core of modern industrialized civilization is the availability of reliable and affordable electrical power. The core difference between village and urban life is the availability of relatively reliable power to energize the devices that define modern living. For most urban residents in India even a 2 hour power cut is difficult to digest and come summer sales of UPS systems that allow uninterrupted power spurts. The scenario in rural areas is far different and power if available is of poor quality. Further power cuts are frequent and long in duration.

A 21st century India requires universal and affordable electric power to enhance the life of rural folk and allow them to express their potential. There are however serious caveats in realizing this mission. The generation capacity of the Indian Grid has to go up dramatically if power is to be supplied to every village in India. Even if the generation were stepped up it will still be impossible to provide grid infrastructure everywhere and the money required to do this will be in the lakhs of crores year after year.

This century has already seen the rapid industrialization of developing countries led by China, India, Brazil and South Africa. It is a fact that if the combined populations of these and other developing countries aspires for a developed country level of energy use, we will need two more earth’s to supply the required fossil energy resources. The constantly rising prices of petroleum is an indication of this trend and will soon reach such alarming proportions that our current economic structures can be upset. The way forward is obviously provide the functionality at a lower energy consumption to help a larger population enjoy the fruits of technology without damaging the environment or fighting wars over resources.

A two pronged approach using modern technologies can combat these problems and reduce theunservedd areas . The first of these will be to dramatically increase the generation of power from renewable sources that have minimum impact on the environment. While sources like conventional giant hydroelectric projects are renewable, the impact that they have on the environment and human populations living in thesubmergee areas make them controversial and decidedly nonecoo-friendly. The key sources of renewable power in this century will be Solar power (Photo-voltaic, thermal and direct solar), wind (on shore, off shore, micro) , Micro and Mini Hydel and efficient bio mass based power sources. India has the fortune of being located in the best zone for solar generation and has aa potential for thousands of MW of power.

The second key approach will be to innovate and create standards for more efficient electrical devices like lights, fans, refrigerators, industrial equipment etc to better utilize the energy generated. After all a watt saved is a watt earned.

The power generation, transmission and consumption patterns in India are antiquated and a lot of savings can be realized by using better technology equipment in all cases. Some revealing statistics below show the potential for savings.

Lighting consumes about 15 % of the total energy generated in India. In developed countries this number is 7-10 % made possible by the use of more efficient luminaries and control gear. This 5-8% savings will amount to a nett savings of about 5603 MW ( India’s current generation is about 112058 MW according to Central Electricity authority 2004) per annum. This is a huge amount of power by any standards and will allow the existing generation to take care of a lot more demand. The actual savings by individual offices and homes can be much more as lighting consumes almost 30-50 % in such settings.
There are similar examples is all fields where electric energy is consumed.



The lighting sector is a all pervasive presence in modern human habitations and as demonstrated above has a huge potential for energy savings and one of the most important technologies that is emerging is the use of high efficiency, high brightness LED (Light Emitting Diodes) lamps for luminaries. LEDÂ’s are electronic devices and are currently advanced enough to provide usable light in all visible colours of the spectrum at very low wattages. Internationally, experts have endorsed the use if LED lighting as the future of electric lighting. An additional benefit of LED lighting is that it is very solar and wind energy friendly as it can operate off the generated low voltage DC directly without any conversions. This ability and the resultant solutions have the capability of revolutionizing both urban grid driven lighting and providing innovative solutions for autonomous and distributed rural lighting.

The efficiencies of LED’s are a factor higher than incandescents and better than most fluorescents. This is however only the beginning as Led technology is advancing rapidly and an average increase of 20% in light output is being achieved annually. As with all other electronics, the cost of the items is falling annually with volumes rising. LEDÂ’s present us with a unique opportunity to make sure that every home in India is lit and the overall productivity of the country is raised while consuming less power. This trend has already begun in the west where LED based lighting is entering more and more areas of lighting. A further advantage of LEDÂ’s is that they dont contain any Mercury or Lead and are relatively benign environmentally. Mercury and Lead pollution are major issues with conventional fluorescents and are inadequately addressed in countries like India where disposal is not scientific. In fact most people just throw it out with the garbage and cause widespread mercury pollution.
Like all other electronic components LED’s are physically rugged, have a long life and do not fail by fusing like conventional lamps. An average LED has a rated lifespan of about 100,000 hours of usage and this practically means that the luminary will last between 8 & 11 years before it needs to be replaced. Overall the long duty cycle and low power consumption of LED’s make them a very attractive solution for many lighting applications.


To be continued...

LED Lighting and disruptive innovations - 1

People often ask me why I quit a cushy software job and am struggling to bring LED lighting into India. The reasons are actually quite simple and not that altruistic. There is a huge market out there for lighting that is currently being met by fossil fuel based energy sources. This is unsustainable and will have to move to modern electric lighting. The problem is that no Indian provider (public or private) is going to wire up hamlets and villages as it does not make economic sense to get these people on the grid for the $10 worth of electricity they will consume per month. Not maintain expensive grid infrastructure in inhospitable terrain. What we are trying to do with LED lighting is what mobile phones did to telecom in India. Leapfrog the tough bits and provide light using sustainable energy sources. This is where LED's step in. When most urban consumers come to us for LED solutions they tend to compare the output to flourescents if not metal halide lamps. The same guys come running back to us when they have a longish grid disruption and their UPS runs out of juice ;-)

I have been touring small villages and up country locations, one net lesson that I learned is that rural folk are very keen on sustainable light sources that give them adequate backup to cook, clean, study without having to give it a second thought. The reception we get for our products is phenomenal and even entry cost is often not a consideration. As my friend Atul Vora (a hard core bean counter and CFO if there ever was one) points out, people are not going to adopt eco-friendly technologies in urban settings till they pay true costs. The true cost of grid power is hell of a lot more if the costs of environmental damage caused by hydro and thermal generation are levied on the consumer. What we are seeing is a gradual privatisation of distribution networks where consumers are being billed with greater accuracy.

A case in point is the entry of private players into Delhi for power distribution. The first thing that they did was to replace the mechanical watt/hour meters with digital ones of lower least count. Instantly the home owners saw a huge rise in the billing as even the resistive load of wiring showed up as consumption. Net effect was the jump to save power. No one in this country is going to save an erg of energy till all this subsidy business is stopped and the government imposes a green tax on energy in-efficient electrical products. If farming at the current scale is not possible without subsidies in power, then we should change the methods of farming, not provide free power. All we are doing in this model is postponing the inevitable and creating an unsustainable population on fossil-fuel based agriculture. Think of what would happen when (not if) power tariff shot up 300 %. Famine is the word for it. Our entire 'green revolution' is based on hybrid seeds that need oil derived fertilizers and pesticides and coal derived power to pump water. The politicos who allegedly support the rural masses are driving them into a deeper hole.



to be continued...

Breakthrough in solar PV generation using Nanotech

Nanotechnology dramatically increases the efficiency with which photons are converted to electricity, driving down manufacturing costs while increasing efficiency.NanoHorizons, Inc., an emerging leader in applied nanoscale materials and solutions, announced today that it has received a notice of allowance from the US Patent Office for its innovative nanoscale photovoltaic cell design. NanoHorizons' design enables dramatic improvements in solar cell efficiency and breakthrough reductions in fabrication costs. Brighter, more efficient Organic LEDs (OLEDs) are also made possible. Read more here.

Look ma, no PV solar light

Fibre optics coupled with some innovative collecter design allows sunlight direct to carry the light of the sun indoors. The hybrid device allows sunlight (IR filtered) to be 'piped' to the destination required inside a building. This is a great thechnology and will augment PV based and grid based electric lights using opto-electronic sensors to balance the load. Fact of the matter is that bulk of the energy consumed for indoor lighting is used during daylight hours especially in office complexes. This device is a great example of clear thinking and use of modern materials. While factories and industrial sheds typically have some daylight harvesting mechanism's in place this should make it easier for line of sight constrained locations to enjoy the same benefits.

Urine powered battery for health industry

When i thought i had seen it all, this pops up ! Scientists in Singapore have come up with a urine powered battery that produces 1.5V potential difference on .2ml of urine. This new battery will be the perfect power source for cheap, disposable healthcare test-kits for diseases such as diabetes. This research was published Aug. 15 in the Institute of Physics' Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.Led by Dr Ki Bang Lee, a research team at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have developed a paper battery that is small, cheap to fabricate, and which ingeniously uses the fluid being tested (urine) as the power source for the device doing the testing.

Wow !

Energy issues with instant water heaters

A number of 'instant' water heaters are in the market and are usually picked up by those who are space constrained or budget constrained. The problems with this technology are complex. The key is that it is probably more energy efficient than storage water heaters as there is no storage thermal leakage (even thought the tanks are insulated). The instant heaters however load the grid during a very specific time frame and add to the total peak grid power that is to be generated. From the indian perspective one can say that the peak water heating load is between 7 AM to about 9 AM. As the penetration of electric heating of water is rather low compared to other industralized nations this is OK. With increasing adoption of storage heating technology, this problem will result in the all so familiar 'load shedding'. As ever energy costs are the only way to tackle this problem. The way i see it, preheating of water using solar thermal storage technology augmented with instant electrical heating is probably a great way of addressing this as the preheating will reduce the overall load on the grid.

Milestones and Trends in Renewable Energy -- 2005 and 2006

Sterling D. Allan of Pure Energy Systems News has a review article on the trends in renewable energy for the year past and the year to come. The good news is that Wind and solar are catching up with grid supplied energy in terms of cost/KWh. The gap is narrowing partly due to advances in renewable generation technology as well as the rising cost of conventional generation. Read more here.

Happy new year

I wish all readers a happy and prosperous new year.

Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa?

I generally dont post speculative theories, except that after the discovery of the 'hobbit' humans in Indonesia, all theories on the out of africa premise are getting a long hard look. There is a feature article from NatGeo.

Know your country - Carvaka philosophy

My general disestablishmentarian disposition hides my fundamental conservativeness :) For what it is worth I sometimes hold forth on historical philosophical fragments to demonstrate the vast diversity in thought and action in this vast sub-continent of ours. The resurgence of the fundamental right wingers in the name of majoritarian rights often makes me question their locus standi in claiming to represent 'Indian' thought. While major rational systems of thought like Buddhism and jainism have its origins in India there are a number of lesser known systems that predate the vedantic hindusim that is served as a kind of one size fit 'Indian religion' today. This post is on the carvaka school of thought that is thought to have flourished at about 600 BC. A unique school of thought that has shaped modern India, it is attributed to its founder Brihaspath, who also finds place in the Indian pantheon of rishis (though they generally don't tell you why).

Wikipedia has the following to say:
The Sanskrit word Chaarvaaka is generally understood to be a compound of two words chaari and vaak; chaari means sweet, attractive and vaak means speaking. Some other meanings are also ascribed to the word, but 'sweet speaking' is the most plausible. This school of thought was also called Lokayata probably from pre-Vedic times. Lokayata would broadly mean 'prevalent among people' or 'prevalent in the world' (loka and ayata). Read the entire entry here.

Apparently the agnostics were the sweet talkers of the pre-vedic era. Guess they could not stop the cult of Soma for obvious reasons :) Booze is more attractive than relentless logic!

The humanistic text's site has the following to say

The system of philosophy named after its founder, Carvaka, was set out in the Brhaspati Sutra in India probably about 600 BCE. This text has not survived and, like similar philosophies in Greece, much of what we know of it comes from polemics against it and remarks by its critics. There is a further similarity with Greece in that this is a rationalistic and skeptical philosophy, thus undermining the widespread belief in the West that Indian philosophy is primarily religious and mystical. Amartya Sen has argued, in fact, that there is a larger volume of atheistic and agnostic writings in Pali and Sanskrit than in any other classical tradition—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic. He adds that this applies also to Buddhism, the only agnostic world religion ever to emerge.

CarvakaÂ’s philosophy developed at a time when religious dogma concerning our knowledge of reality, the constitution of the world, and the concept of an afterlife were being increasingly questioned, both in India and elsewhere. Specifically, the school of Carvaka contained within itself a materialism that ruled out the supernatural (lokayata), naturalism (all phenomena described in terms of the properties of the four elements), rejection of the Vedas (nastika), and a skepticism that included rejection of inferential logic, or induction.

One of the best sources for CarvakaÂ’s atheistic argument happens to be a book, Sarvadarshansamgraha (the collection of all philosophies), written in the Fourteenth Century by Madhavacarya, a Vaishnavite (Hindhu) scholar. You can read the entire entry here.

Fact of the matter is that Madavacharya is part of the bhakti movement that focused on getting vedic relegion into South India against the logical tide of Jaina beliefs & it appears carvaka logic. It was more geo-political than spiritual. In fact the southern branch of vaishnavism as represented by the iyengars (then kalai) was seeded with converts from other castes to overcome lack of support base. All our spritual leaders from the distant past to the present seem to be more interested in temporal affairs than spritual :-) Reminds me of the 'Bene Gessrit' of Frank Herberts opus 'the Dune'.

Justin Podur interviews RMS

Znet meets RMS. Looks like a number of sites that i frequent are merging :) Read more on the Osho's interview here.

The aesthetics of heat sinks

An interesting technical problem in SSL lighting is to design heat sinks that allow the lamp to function efficiently without 'cooking itself' in the process. A major jump in lighting technology is accompanied by a different set of challenges. Edison did not have to worry much about heat removal as the incandescent lamps that he worked with needed heat to work. Ditto with fluorescent technology, which actually underperforms in cold weather.

With solid state lighting it is a challenge to get the heat out of the die. The problem is very similar to the heat sinking in PC CPU's except that it needs to be a hell of a lot more reliable and cant use devices with moving parts.

One outcome of this is the extremely ugly and functional designs that we see in today's LED luminaries. As a major luminary OEM CEO confided in me, "What is the use of a 10 MM light source that needs a 6 inch heatsink? ? This is what we get for asking electronics engineers to design luminaries :) What the world of LED lighting needs is a kind of 'heat sink howard roark' (Ayn Rand, Fountainhead) who can extract the beauty of a structural form without resorting to ornamentation. In this we were shocked at the parallels between what ayn rand describes as a structure or design being aesthetic without resorting to embellishments and non-functional decorations and the precise need in modern lighting design (at least i was :). The philosophy behind the statement is what is driving heat sink development currently. The heat sinks available today are very functional, beautifully designed, have thermal maps simulated on the best of software but lack the genius of a Roark in bringing the natural beauty of the form out. This will become our next challenge, beauty in functional form so that it can be outside the box rather than being hidden away inside your luminary.

MS ends IE on Mac

Clearly a case of good riddance. read more here. Viva darwin !

What's the principle behind SSL ?

One question that often pop's up in the context of Solid state lighting is what the fuss is all about. What it's all about is a fundamental technology change in generating light. While gas discharge tubes were a good innovation (incandescents are typically heating coils, nothing novel except it happened 100 years back). The material properties of different semi-conducting materials and their respective dopants are used to generate light via electro-phoresence. this is the direct conversion of electricity into EMR in the visible range. That is the magic..

MIT Media Labs new fiasco

Rajesh Jain's Blog is carrying an article on the new $100 Laptop that MIT's Negroponte is touting. Brings to mind the MIT India-Media lab project that ended in acrimony with the government throwing out MIT for greed and lack of results.

Uber heat scavenging in Turbosteam autos

Gizmag reports that BMW has developed a turbosteamer proto to demonstrate new ways to increase the overall efficiency of IC engines. While the whole concept of turbocharging is about recovering exhaust heat to increase volumetric efficient, the new concept has a twist, instead of a high speed turbo to compress more charge into the cylinder, this heat is used to power a steam engine that adds to the overall power of the auto. The magic seems to be the way the power is channeled via a combined drive system. What these technologies do is to help extend the life of the oil economy by optimizing resource usage.

The attack of the solar space spiders

The new scientist
has an article about spider like robots that will be used to build solar webs in space to pipe down solar energy to us. Guess what this will do to golbal warming ! Read more here.

Bio Hydrogen

One of the critical probelms with the Hydrogen economy is the source of all the clean hydrogen. Most current projects essentially extract it from fossil hydrocarbons, which needless to say defeats the whole point of renewables. An earlier post looked at sunlight as the fuel for hydrogen extraction. Here is a biological option. While this stuff is in its infancy, a combination of Solar and Bio fermentation could be the way the future goes.

Patent Pending

More on the ills of the US patent system and the problems associated .