It’s a well-known fact that we, as humans, have always strived for a sustainable lifestyle. In the process, we’ve realised that there are multiple problems which need fixing. While some are being worked upon, some are yet to be discovered.
As of today, one of the biggest questions we need to answer is that of sustainable energy. While there are multiple organisations working towards a future with viable energy sources, a student group from IIT Madras has stepped up and organised the Green Energy Summit.
In this process of analysing the enigma of energy, the organising committee of the Green Energy Summit initiated the Rural Energy Challenge. Organisers of the Summit sent a shout-out to innovators around the country asking them to provide feasible technological solutions to help improve the lives of those living in the villages. More than 67.3% of the rural population still uses firewood to cook. And to top it all, an astounding 4.3 million lose their lives due to household air pollution.
The Rural Energy Challenge gained a lot of traction and managed to catch the attention of many tech enthusiasts. From an astounding 380 registrations, only nine promising projects were shortlisted. Apart from helping the teams in funding the project’s expenses, the organisers also provided teams with mentors to help them tackle hurdles they were to encounter along the way.
The REC finally terminated at Shaastra 2018, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras. Professors and representatives from incubators were invited to scrutinise each aspect of the projects carefully. Three projects emerged to be the most sustainable and feasible innovations and have been offered incubation opportunities by foundations such as SELCO and Deshpande Foundation.
Here’s a little information on the nine showcased ideas:
1) Dehumidifier with Cold Storage: The winning idea, a hybrid technology that couples cold-storage facility with dehumidification. The whole machinery, driven by solar power, requires no external source of electrical energy or fuels. The machine could pull water from the air, and this would also remove the dependence of the machine on a constant source of water as an input.
2) Solar Photovoltaic Powergen System: An electro-mechanical device that can help in tracking and harnessing maximum power from PV by electrical tracking along with mechanical tracking in a single control unit. They are tackling the electrical problems mentioned above by using MPPT algorithm called Enhanced Leader Particle Swarm Optimisation (EL-PSO).
3) Solar tracking and Prioritising: A single-axis, sun-tracking module coupled with a retrofit load prioritisation system. The module will track the motion of the sun to ensure maximum exposure of the panels to perpendicular rays and in turn increase efficiency. The prioritisation system will help the villagers save a lot of energy as the “low priority” systems would shut down when there’s low sunlight, thus saving the power used.
4) Gravity Light: Gravity Light is a device that generates light from the energy of dropping weight. Gravity light is basically a small lamp or LED which is powered by an elevated weight, which when descends, rotates the shaft of a motor at a very high speed producing approximately 1/10th of a watt which powers an LED lamp that provides light for about 20 minutes.
5) Solar Parabolic Concentrator: With the help of the ‘Parabolic Solar Power Concentrator’, the diffused sunlight is focused at a point to increase the heat energy. When a Stirling Engine is placed at this focal point, it uses the heat to generate mechanical energy. Due to this, the flywheel rotates. When connected to the generator, the required electricity can be produced.
6) Solar Powered Bladeless Fan: This project focuses on conserving energy going waste with bladed-fans. A lot of energy goes into vibration and heat, the bladeless fan utilises thermo-electric generators to cool down the air before circulation.
7) Vertical Axis Wind Turbine: The present horizontal axis wind turbines have trouble handling winds from different directions. The vertical axis wind turbines address issues of fatigue on the shafts and the angle of attack on the blades. To maximise output, the device uses magnetic-levitation which eradicates the losses due to friction.
8) Waste to Energy With Several Other Uses: Farm waste, cow dung, sewage waste/grey water and kitchen waste from village households are directed to a modified anaerobic biogas digester, that produces biogas which can be used for domestic purposes.
A digestate is produced from this which is filtered through a slow sand filter. The filtered digestate is fed to a subsurface drip system that irrigates fields which can be safely used to cultivate fodder or even edible crops.
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The organisers say of the Rural Energy Challenge say, “The journey, and not the outcome, is important.” They believed that the participants had a lot more to take away apart from just the prize money. One of the participants said: “When we visited the village, we couldn’t help but notice that metropolitan cities get more attention and the villages hardly get any power.”
A representative from Team Arc (Project – 3) said, “solar technology has already entered the rural areas. The village we visited was very supportive of the idea.” Most of the teams seem to agree to the fact that there is very little technical know-how in these areas and educating the locals is of utmost importance.
After all the hard work teams put in the Rural Energy Challenge, they learnt how difficult it is to implement what looks good on paper. “With monetary support and help in other aspects, these ideas can change the future of villages,” said another participant. The main motto of the Rural Energy Challenge was to give these potential ideas a platform, from where it could take off and become a reality, and like you can see, it has accomplished quite a bit already!