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Wanted - Small Change!
From Mitra's spring newsletter: The world is changing faster than Mitras anticipated two years ago, when we set out to raise an ‘energy conscience’ amongst young people and their parents, at schools, campuses and community gatherings.
Not everyone is convinced about the imminent threat of devastation due to climate change but they are more aware of the phenomenon and that helps.
Mitras have observed genuine interest amongst the young, to find ways of living a better, sustainable and useful lifestyle.
Mitras spent a large time of last year interacting with individuals and institutions that are working with the lesser privileged amongst the urban poor and in far flung hamlets.
As a result of our interventions we are slowly building a small but diverse community of renewable energy users who demonstrate that it is possible to lead better sustainable and useful lifestyles.
Key to that goal is of course, education. A holistic understanding of the cause and effect of human activities and ways of reducing our negative impact on society and the environment.
Mitras are pleased to share, with you, a new project in our current battery of carbon neutral campus program.
A library in a tribal school for warli children in Dahanu, Maharashtra. We are so proud of it!
Our update on carbon neutral campus program on page 2 clearly shows the increased awareness and demand for change.
Small change, we believe, is a good good starting point.
Interestingly, small change is all what we got for our fund raising efforts this year.
An area of our work that certainly needs to change.
So, Mitras, through this news letter, is inviting you to chip in, give, donate, small change or a big cheque, but please do.
It will help.
TO READ THE WHOLE NEWSLETTER CLICK ON SPRING 2009 (Newsletter section in sidebar)
Adarsh (ka) Ghar – Smart Home in Bangalore.
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| Adarsh's home |
And now Adarsh, our carbon free neutral campus program coordinator, has gone all the way by building a smart house for himself.
Powered by the wind and sun, Adarsh’s new house in Bangalore is the best example of how combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency can provide uninterrupted electricity for your daily household needs.
Adarsh’s parents were initially hesitant about the idea of having a 28 foot tall wind turbine on their roof, skeptical about solar panels, dubious about the LED lighting and shocked at the costs involved.
They had no problem with installing a solar water heater, but investing in an integrated renewable energy system was as alien an idea as the mobile phone was 5 years ago.
Adarsh gave them a tour of installations he has done as part of Mitra’s carbon neutral campus program. He did the investment vs. monthly bill calculations to convince them.
But what finally did the trick was the promise of 'uninterrupted' power supply.
You see Senior Mr. Vansay is a big sports-tv addict. His biggest irritation in his retired years is the power cuts imposed by Bescom during cricket matches.
Adarsh installed a 650 watts wind turbine and an array of solar panels rated at 640 watts that would give him 2.5 kw of power for lights, fans and other appliances (including TV, efficient kitchen appliances and washing machine) on his roof. He bought a 48 volt 360ah battery to store the power generated by the wind turbine and solar panels. And most importantly he got a local supplier to design special LED lights for his house.
Yeah, we don’t like them incandescent and we absolutely think that the CFL bulb is a loser’s option. The 120 watts of LED lighting is enough to light up the house (see picture) and consumes 4 times less of juice from the batteries than those silly CFL bulbs would have.
It took 2 days for Adarsh to install the turbine, the panels and a 200 litre solar water heater on the roof. A week to install his specially designed LED bulbs. And 2 months to check and double check before he announced Mission Successful.
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