WEEK ONE POSTINGS ON 'MICROHYDRO' Contd...

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24. Date:  Fri, 23 Nov 2001 13:39:52 +0100
Author:  "Nienhuys" <s.nienhuys@chello.nl>
Subject: [RETs] Week 1: RE: Interrelation between Micro-Hydels and Deforestation

In the Northern Areas (NA) of Pakistan the number of micro-hydels is gradually increasing. Long channels lead the glacier water to collection and filter basins. 
Villagers, after getting connected to the grid, buy for the winter electric cooking spirals from Rawalpindi to heat their homes. The electric heat is clean and will 
save firewood, but the voltage drops below any usable level and powerlines or house connections cannot cope with the increased demand. Moreover, in the winter the power supply drops as glaciers start to freeze up. 

In order to have still some light in the houses, BACIP (Building and Construction Improvement Programme) promoted electronic starters on the 40 Watt tube lights, that would even function at 140 to 180 Volts. 

From many sources it can be learned that Improved Cooking Stoves (ICS) with shielding sides indeed save substantial amount of firewood as compared to open three-stone hearts, however, the smoke remains detrimental to health, furniture and house. 

ICS with chimneys have been promoted already for more than 15 years in the Northern Areas and were further improved by BACIP. 

BACIP effectively demonstrated in many houses of the NA that firewood conservation is PRIMARILY realised (over 50%-60% on annual basis) by thermal insulation of the house and controlling ventilation and smoke, rather than further improving the cooking/room-heating stoves. 

Detailed information about the thermal insulation for houses in the NA (Himalayas) and ICS can be obtained from <bacip1@glt.comsats.net.pk> and myself. 

Sjoerd Nienhuys 
Programme Director, BACIP '99-'01 
The Netherlands

25. Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 09:49:04 +0530
Author: "Andrew" <Andrew@inbar.int>
Subject: [RETs] Week 1: Utilising the Power from Microhydro

At the International Netowrk for Bamboo and Rattan we are trying to develop a model for micro hydropower use, particularly to fuel bamboo-based rural industries in hilly areas. We ourselves have no micro hydropower experience but are working with the Hangzhou Regional Centre for Small Hydropower on the project.

Girish Kharel's point number 2 is very interesting and reading through the various contribution this week it would seem to me that there are three tiers of use of 
electricity (in order of adoption). Firstly for home comfort and convenience (lighting, TV, other home electrical appliances), things that improve the quality of life directly. Then a second tier of processing for home and smallholding use (such as hullers etc) in order to reduce drudgery. Finally there would presumably be a third tier, that of income generation, in which surplus power is put to processing use for value addition and sale of products. Bamboo processing would fit into this final category. However, it seems that it is only at this final tier that the power is actively used in income generating activities, and the costs of constructing a power station can start to be recouped.

I was wondering if anyone had experience of this? It certainly makes things more complex in terms of producing a model.

Andrew Benton,
International Network for Bamboo and Rattan,
Beijing 100101-80, China.
website: http://www.inbar.int

26. Date:  Sat, 24 Nov 2001 10:25:43 +0530
Author:  "Peter Schachenmann" <pschachenmann@vitelcom.mg>
Subject:  [RETs] Week 1: Musings on RETs

It seems to me, that we slowly eke forward towards some generalities to the issue:

a. Solving one problem (RETs for mountain areas) without addressing other connected problems will not do the trick, e.g. maintenance, training, transportation and distribution of energy created. 

b. What is good for, or works in one place may be bad or not work under different circumstances (national policy framework, social organisation, local values and beliefs, logic bubbles, relief, location, backstopping facilities and abilities, etc....) 

c. How to foresee and favour overall positive synergy over time and within a particular context and forestall negative synergy and perverse effects? e.g. economically (socio-economic interface, who benefits and for what end?), ecologically (technology-ecology interface) and socially (social integration or widening disparity?) We talk about microhydro in the mountains and first look at it as a technological issue. However, almost all contributions make direct or indirect reference to a wide variety of side issues. E.g. what works in one place may not work somewhere else; what has worked before, does not work anymore; what looks like a solution, is realised over time to become a problem and so on. In short, the points I want to hint at are as follows.

First, this duality of (technological) evolution may remind us, that no free rides exist in this world. Or in other words the "perpetuum mobile" has not yet been discovered; everything has a price and the cost has to be picked up or borne by someone, something, somewhere. In retrospect we come to realise that modernisation is very often to the detriment of the "web of life", the environment and/or the social organisation. 

Second, in light of accelerating interrelationships and pressures at all scales, emanating from a globalised world, modern man is very often too impatient. We look for quick fixes, magic bullets shot from the hip and usually spoon-feed top-down what we believe to know or perceive to work (e.g. through projects). 

Third, as we all know, many ways may lead to Rome. New ideas or solutions to become part of our cultural evolution need to be context-specific, adapted, growing in an iterative process bottom-up, just like nature. A new technology should not be transplanted from one place to another but may come only as "pollen" (idea, contact, demonstration, model,...) from distant plants (e.g. the technological world) to fertilize the local plants, a kind of help for self-help, but integrating 
the wisdom of all stakeholders to a common concept and allowing for the natural cycle of birth and death and rebirth, i.e. let something take root then evolve over time.

Forth, as a solution to a problem may take shape over time, stakeholders have to become shareholders. So called beneficiaries, e.g. poor rural communities do not usually 
see added value without introversion of the "alien". 

Please forgive me if I have moved focus from a specific technology issue to a psychological process. But I believe that many good ideas fail because of a too narrow focus, true to the proverb: "we don't see the forest anymore for want of so many trees" or translated into our situation: "we become blind for the web of things for want of so many (technical) options available. 

Dr. Peter Schachenmann
Madagascar

27. Date:  Sat, 24 Nov 2001 00:31:24 -0700
Author:  David Irvine-Halliday <halliday@enel.ucalgary.ca>
Subject:  Re: [RETs] Week 1: Moderator's Questions

I would like to 'reply' to statements and questions by three of our colleagues.

First, Girish Kharel raises the very important question: "Is providing lighting the main objective?".

From Light Up The Worlds point of view we initiated our home lighting initiative in 1997 using Solid State Lighting  (i.e. White LEDs) because it was so obviously (to us at least) the way of the future for the developing world. The perfect analogy is how you can get a cell phone in Kathmandu these days no problem at all, whereas an 'old fashioned' telephone line will take ages to rent. Why then should the villagers in the rural villages have to go through the incandescent bulb stage, followed by the fluorescent tube and compact fluorescent light, when they can leap frog straight to solid state lighting (SSL)? For those of you who have asked us why we have chosen to focus only on SSL and not also on heating and cooking the answer is simple - back in 1997 we knew very little about all these other great challenges facing the developing world, but we did know more than a little about High Brightness Light Emitting Diodes. We recognized the many advantages that SSL has over conventional lighting (though total lumen output is not one of them as yet) and especially its ability to light a rural home to a very useful degree with only One Watt or so and to allow a child to read with an adequately bright, healthy and safe lamp which uses only 0.3 Watt.

We do not know even now if our choice was the 'correct' one but it seemed such a shame not to try and light up the world with these pico power light sources and pray that whatever blessings they would bring would greatly outweigh the negatives and that solutions to the other challenges might follow in the wake (so to speak) of SSL.

Secondly, my friend Bikash Pandey asked about the economics of scaling down mechanical turbines and generators.

Again, based on the fact that we are SSL, and thus pico power, advocates we do not feel constrained to accept the old viewpoint that if large is good then huge must be terrific and especially if it gets the cost per watt to decrease significantly. If getting the cost per watt down is so wonderful then why don't all the remote villages have power for home lighting? The answer is relatively simple - each of these low cost per watt power systems costs a bucket of money, and far, far more than could be justified for any remote village. Maybe it's time for a paradigm shift in the way we think about the 'cost' of power for remote villages and particularly for SSL. We do not require many watts to light up a village so what does it really matter if the cost per watt is 'ten' times that of the 'big power system' if the villagers can get home lighting in a few months as opposed to waiting for decades (possibly) for the 'cheap' power to come their way. Distributed versus 'grid'power!

Please excuse me as I appear to have got a little 'emotional' in these last few sentences but it does concern me and others, like Stewart Craine and Alex Zahnd, that we may be preventing the rapid home lighting of entire countries by sticking with the outmoded belief that bigger is better - regardless of the circumstances!

Consider the following two examples. In West Bengal a villager can light his home with a single incandescent bulb powered by a pico power hydro generator which actually consists of a 12 Volt, 6 Watt Chinese bike dynamo, which costs only 200 Rupees. Using SSL we can light 3 or 4 homes with this 6 Watts but the cost per watt is still 35 Rupees or so. Does that matter? As this entire home lighting system can be constructed in about an hour or less do we ask the home owner to wait until the 'cheap'power can be brought in?

What about the LUTW village in NW Nepal where the 125 homes are lit using SSL at a total cost of about $60US each using Solar PV panels and keeping in mind that this is almost a one time cost. What does it matter that the cost per watt may have been $3US or more?

There is absolutely no question that we are turning the knee of the SSL brightness graph and that we will not only see a remarkable increase in total lumens per device in the very near future, but there may be an even more spectacular decrease in the cost per device. This in turn will accelerate the use of Solar PV panels and bring down their prices, especially for small units of a few watts and battery prices will follow suit simply because the market will dictate it so!

Thirdly, my friend and colleague Lumin Shrestha eloquently described the wonderful work that the Centre for Rural Technology, Nepal has done with Improved Ghattas.

You may be interested to know that LUTW has an initiative well underway with CRT/N which we call the "Electrified Improved Ghatta". In this case the owner of the ghatta has already improved it and LUTW's contribution is to donate all of the White LED lamps for the village (56 homes) and pay a significant percentage of the electrical upgrade and power distribution, the owner paying the rest. He will then charge each home depending upon the number of lamps they use and we expect that the system capital costs will be paid off in a few years, after which it will bring in a reasonable profit for the owner. The contribution by LUTW will be paid back into a village maintenance fund and regardless of that the cost to LUTW to light each home will still be significantly less than if we had to supply the power ourselves through our normal methods. LUTW considers the "Electrified Improved Ghatta" initiative a very important model for the rest of Nepal, if not the entire continent!

Dave Irvine-Halliday
Director, Light Up The World
http://www.lightuptheworld.org

28. Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 09:12:24 +0530
Author: puru <puru@wlink.com.np
Subject: [RETs] Week 1: Re: Moderator's Questions

Dear Girish ji,

As to your pertinent queries on the development of Microhydro power (MHP), my observations point wise are as follows:

1. MHP is increasingly competing with PVs, especially the Chinese ones are more convenient and maybe cheaper also.

2. The objective of MHP is to assist in rural industrialization e.g. for chilling, processing, bakery plants etc, beside the primary function of lighting housing units. As industrialization picks up, so will development of MHP.

3. The wider popularity of MHP is quite good, but linkages should be developed with medium-scale HP.

4. MHP should be granted for necessity in this e-commerce/governance world and for the sustainable use of water resources.

5. Underground wiring, auto switch-off facility, capacity building to manage the plant by the local community, e.g. Thame HP (in Namche Nepal), training/skill development on relevant issue among the locals, mechanism of sharing of responsibility and benefit-sharing among stakeholders, and budgetary transparency 
when reinvesting the benefits/profits, sharing credits and maintaining revolving fund.

The repair/maintenance facility should be provided in remote areas where transport facilities are not convenient and trained manpower is not available and local users/dealers happen to be discouraged from promoting PVC/MHP. In MHP, not only technical and environmental but also social risk/benefit issues should be duly considered.

Best regards,

Dr. Purushottam Shrestha

29. Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 15:02:10 +0545
Author: "Gehendra Gurung" <gbg@mos.com.np>
Subject: [RETs] Week 1: Microhydro Electricity - ACAP's Experience

The underlying objectives of installation of microhydro electricity in the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) are:

1. to help conserve the forest (environment) by providing alternative sources of energy; 2. support economic development; and 3. help in other social development aspects.

There is no doubt in promoting microhydro electricity in the rural areas for various benefits. I suggest rather talks be concentrated on appropriate technologies for microhydro electricity.

I like to share some of our experiences to further improve microhydro electricity for social and economic development and environmental conservation. Themicrohydros I am talking about are community-owned, not privately-owned.

As the technology of microhydro electricity is new and financial involvement is high, it is risky for poor rural communties. Heavy subsidy/support is required during 
the installation phase. Intensive training is needed on new skill, as it can not be generally derived from indigenous knowledge system. It needs well calculated financial management for sustainability after installation - collecting revenues from the users, using it for recurring costs and depositing for the future capital replacement. Long term vision among the people should be developed where short term needs are urgent.

Retention of trained manpower has become a problem. Once they are trained, they can get new jobs. Especially in our situation, going abroad as skilled and semi-skilled labour (encouraged by government policy) has caused a frequent turnover of locally trained manpower for microhydro electricity plants. Only good management of the plants that generates good income which is sufficient to cover all recurring and future costs, and provide good salary to the staff to retain them. This will need appropriate use of electricity for income generation by the individuals and then to the committees at local level.

Another area of improvement is seen in the availability of appropriate devices and required spare parts for repairment.

In the initial phase the demand for electricity is mainly for lighting. But demand increases as the people like to use it for heating, cooking, operating mills, etc. etc. 
while the output of the plant remains constant. This needs appropriate devices to control load, to keep the use within the output of the generator, or needs load shedding like in all over Nepal during dry season. We used load controlling devices like MCV, PCC that is based on wattage. So the household which is trying to use more than what it is entitled to will suffer after the power cut instead of the whole community suffering like when load shedding occurs. However, breakings and unavailability of these devices as per the need of the households is one of the important problems in management of microhydro electricity. Such devices are mainly manufactured to suit the mega-hydro electricity. While the manufacturers are not interested to invest on manufacturing devices suitable to microhydro as the market is limited. Most electrical devices available in the market can not meet the needs for microhydro electricity. So in technical aspect, intensive Research and Development on devices suitable for microhydro is required.

From the begining we are not interested in encouraging communities to connect microhydro electricity plants with central grid with the view that this will loosen the 
control of the communities over the plants. Also this will limit the local initiatives, local economic activities, local capacity building, and other beneficial activities to the locals.

30. From: "Yuvaraj Nitya" <ynitya@hotmail.com>
Subject: [RETs]: Week 1: Need for simple and economical solutions for the Micro-hydel Programme
Date sent: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 05:35:52 +0000

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