Adarsh (ka) Ghar – Smart Home in Bangalore.

Adarsh's home

Mitras like to practice what they preach. Admittedly, it is difficult, yeah, but we try, because we know every little positive action matters.

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.