Ash and I got to chatting about electricity in the village today. As i said in an earlier post, if we as a school try and get a connection straight from the government it is going to cost something like £1000. But if we get together 10 families, because of subsidies available to tribal people, of which everyone in our village is, we can get it for £80 instead, and the cost of the wire from one person’s house to another.

The option is self generation, hopefully by renewable sources. We applied to the local government before for micro solar panels for Hunar Ghar, but the guy   of that ran off with our, and other people’s, money and the gov. refused to admit any knowledge about the scheme. Another option which I’m exploring now is finding a charity that deals specifically with solar energy for poor people to give/subsidise some solar panels to/for us. That’s the problem, solar panels are expensive unless subsidised.

As Ash said though, we don’t want to tax the people in Bakhel, either financially or morally, by dissuading mains power in deference to expensive solar lights. By a quick back of the envelop calculation I’d say they use less energy in year than we do in a few days, and that’s not even taking account of the vast amounts of waste westerns put out, and all the energy and plastic and shipping that has gone into the menagerie of appliances and gizmos and bits-and-bobs that we all have. They then are among the last people on earth that should have any reason to change thier life-styles energy-wise; it is us that should be working in far more feverish ways to get our consumption down.

That taken into account, we don’t want to unnecessarily encourage dependency on a mains grid that is designed by incredibly bad policy; 50 million people in India are refugees as a result of dam projects for power and irrigation. Mains power is also not cheaper if you take into account the debt taken on by the country to finance such projects. Add to that that mains electricity distribution is only 40% efficient in India, plus the fact that solar lights once fitted don’t have bills to paid makes them increasing attractive. We also want to set a precedent that development doesn’t need to, indeed shouldn’t follow the model of the past 100 years that has got us all in this environmental and social mess in the first place. It is incredibly important to challenge the norms to discover and establish new, better ways of doing things. There is another way forward, another way to be healthy, happy and comfortable, and we’re going to do everything we can to establish ourselves at the forefront of that movement.

Most people thinking of solar lights think of the photovoltaic type. That is, the ones that turn light directly into electricity to charge a battery. What you can also do however is use solar-thermal technology; light is reflected to heat water or similar to drive a turbine. A heat sink is used to make the energy continue at night. I don’t know if this can be done on a small scale, but I’ll find out. There is a charity community in a nearby town called the Brahma Kumaris who are building a massive unit to power 1000s of homes with an array or something like 120 60 foot high mirrors. Perhaps they know, or perhaps there is a way of buying electricity off them. I shall find out!