Monday, October 09, 2006

Wind Energy

oct 8th, 2006

thanks, avinash, for this information.

the future is clearly in alternative energies. although i am personally partial to solar.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Avinash

Rajeev,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/business/worldbusiness/28wind.html?ex=1160107200&en=497edec951cb9fe8&ei=5070

Some good news on the alternative energy front. Last year I was asked to come up with a feasibility study and approximate cost estimate for installing a wind turbine at my workplace. Since then I've been following the wind energy developments quite closely. It seems that India has quite high level of participation in wind energy development. There are several small wind turbine manufacturers in India. Being an environmental engineer, I am always on the lookout for more ways to deal with environmental problems in countries like India. Unfortunately, the only countries that can afford environmental cleanup and environmental standards compliance are the rich ones. However, simple measures (like rain water harvesting, which my father has implemented in his house in Sullia, and biogas generation) are easy enough to execute. They also have very low operating costs. My main interest lies in biological waste treatment, an expertise which can also be used in biological energy generation.

A

4 comments:

Ghost Writer said...

"Recycling" my comments on our energy alternatives from another posting on this blog

We need to go in for a process that is

1- USA & China independent i.e. one that does not need the US or China to invest in it

2- Agriculture linked - i.e. one whose outputs, in addition to being clean can be fed into our agricultural sector. This will start a 'Virtuous Cycle' i.e. the more energy is consumed, the more farm output we get. I would not even mind subsidising farm energy if it came from such a resource - the returns in improved farm productivuty will be awesome.

We must never forget that the roots of India's wealth have been and always will be - agriculture and intellectual property.

Anonymous said...

I dont see why the US will use alternative sources of energy. The use of fossil feuls lets the US continue its economic dominance. Oil is the major reason why the Dollar is as strong as it is.

Because of the system in place today where any country wanting oil has to maintain a dollar reserve (so that, that country can buy from the NYMEX and the london mercantile exchange), a complete shift to an alternate feul will cause the collapse in value of the US Dollar. The US will then no longer have access to cheap credit.

Even the rise in prices of oil has benefitted the US as well. The rise in prices of oil have caused a rise in demand for the dollar. In the past few months when the oil prices were high, Saudi Arabia's dollar reserves grew even more than that of China. And much of the money was invested in US treasury bills.


With oil prices going down, the value of the dollar also probably will come down slightly. In the present system, I do not see an incentive for the US to gind an alternative feul to oil and then let it replace oil.

Anonymous said...

Interesting story in the organizer. It tells us a tale in the panchatantra and how it is relevent in the context of the US - Pakistani war on terror

Panchatantra on musharraf

non-carborundum said...

India has actually done reasonably well with Wind Energy with installed capacity over 5000 MW (http://mnes.nic.in/ach1.htm) and there is scope for huge capacity additions as the gross potential is over 40000 MW.

I think sources like tidal also have great potential. Recently a tidal power plant of 3.5 MW has been set up in the Sunderbans at a reasonable cost of Rs. 40 crore. Decentralized Distributed Generation through Biomass Gasifiers is also one of the areas of thrust which I think is going to do really well and is a major thrust area for MNES.

I think capacity addition through large Hydro will always remain a bit tricky for reasons like difficulties in evacuation of Power from the North East and of course all the terrorist NGOs which really don't want any new projects to take off. Small Hydro is a better bet in this regard.

If we work incrementally, close to half our power generation could be through alternative/renewable sources although its obvious that coal based thermal generation is going to be the mainstay.