Energy

The following table appears on the homepage. It requires elaboration, which appears below.

Various forms of energy are consumed at pointReturn for water lifting, electric conveniences, vehicles and cooking. The following note, written in 2011, outlines the current status and future plans.

Water lifting:

1- Water lifting: This is done entirely by alternate sources. Between 2007 and 11 all this work has been done solely by a windpump. [In 2011 we propose to install an electric pump in the well that will be driven by solar electricity].The following formula is used to calculate the power produced by the windpump [source]
wHp= q*tdh/3960, where
q=flow= 6000lpd or 1gallon/min
tdh= total height lifted=100[ave. annual suction,ft]+20[discharge,ft]=120′
Thus,
wHP= 1*120/3960= .03hp
Windmill power rating is therefore,
.03*746=23watts
Energy produced by the windpump in kW in 24hours= 23*24/1000= 0.552kW
The data in the above table against “Power output of windmill,kWH” is auto calculated from a start date of Jul 1, 2007 when the windmill was commissioned.

Electricity:

2- The data that appears against “Solar energy consumed, kwH” is directly read off an energy meter that measures the power drawn from the solar power plant.We use electricity for lighting and charging phones and computers. Until recently we had an electric scooter which was charged by solar; this is proposed to be given away because the majority view is not to incur the replacement cost of what is clearly a short lived and expensive battery.
3- The “Total energy produced” is to be viewed as the power we would have otherwise drawn from the grid.

Vehicles:

4- I use a 10 year old wagon to commute to the project. It is a Toyota Qualis that has played such an invaluable role that I hope it will always keep its place in the team that developed pR.
A mini excavator bought in 2009 to dig the RWH bodies at my convenience. It’s work will be done by 2012. ‘The diesel debt’ shown is what is consumed by these two vehicles. A flat rate of 20L/week is used to calculate the wagon’s consumption. The excavator consumes about 100L per swale. The diesel debt is a running account, auto-calculated by the table. The plan to clear this debt is told in this page.

Cooking:

5-Most of the cooking is done by firewood and charcoal. We have, most of the time, enough lopped limbs and branches to sustain us, but have bought on a few occasions, sub-prime firewood from a local farm. We are planning to develop an adequate stand of fuel tree, casuarina. We also use a small quantity of LPG for making tea. We are acutely aware of the un-sustainability of this and hope to generate biogas with cow-dung.

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