Smart Meters

Electricity needs to be consumed at the speed of light. So the very moment it is generated at a hydro electric, thermal, nuclear or wind power plant it needs to be consumed by some household or industry.

Usually electric supply companies provision for an average supply load. But what happens say during peak hours in the Delhi summer is that the demand far outstrips the supply, and that is when load shedding happens.



One very simple way of controlling this is to have smart meters that charge as per the supply demand curve. So when the demand is very high say during 5-9 pm when airconditioners and many other high consumption devices are on, the charge could be higher. This will prompt customers to only use the required appliances during this peak hour.

There is an initial cost of installing such meters but eventually the convenience they offer is immense.

You Live in a City, Dont You?

If you were to randomly ask that question to everybody on this earth, the probability of being correct is now over 50%.

As of 2007, over 50% of the world lives in cities. By 2050 this number will be over 70%. In India more than 40 cities have a population of over 1 million.



We associate urbanization with progress. For a country like India, economic and social progress has meant that more and more of us today live in cities.

But this also means that the cities are getting strained for resources. There is a strain on water, energy, transportation to name a few resources.

We need better ways to organize ourselves and distribute the available resources. We need to make the cities a livable environment for larger and larger number of people.

The current mode of development involves consumption of available resources without any means of replenishing them. This has led to rampant destruction of the environment.

How do you think we can allow the cities to grow and flourish without harming the environment?

ISRO Lacks Confidence

The moon has water it has now been confirmed by analyzing data obtained from NASA's Moon Minerology Mapper (M3). In the following paper that appeared in Science, the authors have reported their scientific findings:

Character and Spatial Distribution of OH/H2O on the Surface of the Moon Seen by M3 on Chandrayaan-1
C. M. Pieters¹, J. N. Goswami², R. N. Clark³, M. Annadurai⁴, J. Boardman⁵, B. Buratti⁶, J.-P. Combe ⁷, M. D. Dyar⁸, R. Green⁶, J. W. Head¹, C. Hibbitts⁹, M. Hicks ⁶, P. Isaacson¹, R. Klima¹, G. Kramer⁷, S. Kumar¹⁰, E. Livo³, S. Lundeen⁶, E. Malaret¹¹, T. McCord⁷, J. Mustard¹, J. Nettles¹, N. Petro¹², C. Runyon¹³, M. Staid¹⁴, J. Sunshine¹⁵, L. A. Taylor¹⁶, S. Tompkins¹⁷, P. Varanasi<sup>6

1</sup> Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
² Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India.; Indian Space Research Organization, Bangalore, India.
³ U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO 80225, USA.
⁴ Indian Space Research Organization, Bangalore, India.
⁵ Analytical Imaging and Geophysics, Boulder, CO 80303, USA.
⁶ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
⁷ Bear Fight Center, Winthrop, WA 98862,USA.
⁸ Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA.
⁹ Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723–6005, USA.
¹⁰ National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, India.
¹¹ Applied Coherent Technology Corporation, Herndon, VA 22070, USA.
¹² NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
¹³ College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424, USA.
¹⁴ Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 85719–2395, USA.
¹⁵ University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
¹⁶ University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996–1410, USA.
¹⁷ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, VA 22203, USA.

This is a wonderful achievement. Three Indian Scientists, J. N. Goswami, M. Annadurai and S. Kumar, from PRL, ISRO and NRSA are listed as authors in this seminal paper.


But what happened to ISRO's own instruments? M3 was NASA's instrument riding on the Chandrayaan. ISRO claimed that they had found water ten months ago when ISRO's own Moon Impact Probe (MIP) landed on the moon. But why did they wait for NASA to come out with the announcement first? Why didn't they have the confidence to come out with the findings before anyone else? Why couldn't ISRO beat NASA in announcing this seminal finding?

Why is ISRO sitting on the large amounts of data collected by various instruments aboard the Chandrayaan rather than analyzing it and beating others in making path breaking discoveries. In hindsight it is easy to look for information in the data. But why didnt the ISRO scientists draw the right conclusions at the right time from the data that they had. The fact remains that ISRO didnt have the confidence to beat NASA in this announcement.

But this is only the beginning, I hope ISRO will look closely into all the data they have collected over the past many months and come out with path breaking discoveries on their own rather than wait for others to lead the way.

Smart Architecture

Delhi has officially felled 38000 trees in the past four years mostly for development purposes. Most of these trees have been cut for laying of the metro, flyovers, malls, new buildings, etc. Unofficial figures put the number of trees cut at over 50, 000.

The law in Delhi requires that every time you cut one tree you need to plant ten saplings. Often these saplings are not planted or they are planted in the outskirts and not cared for so they die off. The official figures for plantation of saplings show that about 60, 000 saplings have been planted whereas 380, 000 should have been planted.

Cut here plant there

But even the plantation policy has been flawed. Trees are being cut inside the city and the few saplings being planted are in the outskirts. The courts and biologists have questioned whether this is an effective response in terms of the environment.



Smart architecture: Incorporate the existing landscape

The Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore has the policy that no tree can be cut on campus. Rather they have put the onus on the architects to construct buildings to incorporate the trees that are present in their designs. Obviously this is not always possible but it should be the intent always.

My office is in Vasant Kunj. Vasant Kunj in Delhi was recently populated in the 1980s and 1990s. It is in the northern edges of Aravali Hills and till recently it had thick forests (bani, in local parlance). All this has been cleared to construct houses, offices and malls. There is no trace of the hills which were once part of the landscape here. The architects and engineers came, blasted the rocks with dynamite, felled the trees and constructed buildings just like anywhere else. The result, this area does not retain its original character. Now just imagine if the architects had been smart and had incorporated the local landscape into their designs. The result would have been stunning to say the least. And also environmentally sane!

The Steam Engine Did it!

There is an energy problem in the world today. And it seems to be growing.

Firstly there is insufficient energy for the exploding world population. Today about 1.6 billion people live without electricity. Of these 400 million are Indians. Even those who have access to electricity in their homes, have to face frequent power cuts. So there is need to ramp up production of energy to meet the growing needs.

Secondly the conventional sources of energy are very polluting for the environment. Over 50% of India's current power needs are fulfilled by coal based thermal power plants. Coal power plants produce about 80, 000 MW of power per year in India. A typical 500 megawatt coal plant burns 1.4 million tons of coal each year producing:
3.7 million tons of Carbon Dioxide
10,000 tons of Sulfur Dioxide
500 tons of small airborne particles
720 tons of Carbon Monoxide
10,200 tons of Nitrogen Oxide
170 pounds of Mercury
220 pounds of Arsenic

Well we all know what problems these gases and toxic elements produce: acid rain, smog, cancer, etc.

Now here is an interesting graph that shows how the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere has changed over the past one thousand years.

Atmospheric CO2 Concentration over centuries

The amount of atmospheric CO2 was steady for many hundreds of years and started rising just before 1800. Here is a closer look at those years when this rise in atmospheric carbon started:

Atmospheric CO2 levels Started Rising in 1769

Something seems to have happened in 1769. What was it? James Watt patented the Steam Engine that year!

Today steam engines are gone but every little piece of technology consumes power in some form or other. In this series that Jenelia kickstarted on this blog with her post on Emerging Green Technologies lets discuss possible roadblocks on the path to smarter utilization of technology and solutions for a greener planet. This post and the series is also inspired by a presentation made by Deva P Seetharam, a colleague who believes fervently that technology can green the planet.

Emerging Green Technologies Are the Future

It took millions of years for fossil fuels to form. Unfortunately humankind has almost exhausted this precious resource within half a century! This deed has not only left us in a lurch but also has messed up Nature’s chain. While humankind released enormous green house gases, it also consumed up nature’s environment cleansing forests, which were the remedy. Today the only way to protect our world and yet keep it going is to find alternatives to the fast depleting fossil fuels. This is where green technologies come in.

Overview of Green Technologies



The energy consumption of the world has increased in multi-folds in the latter part of this century. Green technology is being predicted to be the effective alternative solution to meet the energy requirements as well as bring back nature to normalcy. Green technology is simply any technique that allows utilizing lower energy levels while delivering high output. This exciting green technology can be put to use in almost every sector. For example, in manipulating nature’s resources such as wind, water and light to generate electricity, constructing green buildings that are environment friendly in construction methods, efficiently managing data and compute farms in the IT sector where there’s a lot of energy consumption, in agriculture, and almost any other field that requires huge amounts of energy consumption or results in the emission of green house gases?

Lets look at the simple example of the use of green technology in buildings. There are several advantages in using green technology in today’s buildings. There are also challenges.

Advantages of Green Buildings

There are various immediate as well as long term benefits of using green technology in buildings. Advantages of using green technology include making the environment within and outside the building healthy and cozy; saving much needed energy and water; reducing the construction cost by using recycled materials; lowering the levels of construction and demolition wastage; increasing the value of property; using renewable energy resources; improving air quality; using materials that are long lasting and easy to maintain. The major challenge is the non availability of skilled workers with knowledge in green construction techniques.

Green Building Concept
Image Courtesy: http://www.mlit.go.jp

To reverse the damage to nature and to have a sustainable future, mankind must invest in green technologies. It seems the so called third world countries have a lead in this and may push other nations to the rear in the adoption of green technologies. Asian countries are keen to adopt technologies. President Obama exposed his fears in a press meet and here is a quote from his speech. "There's no longer a question about whether the jobs and the industries of the 21st century will be centered around clean, renewable energy. The only question is: which country will create these jobs and these industries? And I want that answer to be the United States of America." To their credit Asian giants like India and China have been surprisingly keen to invest huge sums in green technologies! The future may well be theirs if they succeed in doing that.


This article is contributed by Jenelia Watson, a technology geek who is also a web designer and SEO expert. She maintains several websites including Educational Courses, Microsoft Certification, Web Hosting Services, PC Security Software, and Wireless Surveillance Security Camera. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: jeneliawatson@gmail.com.

Why is Technology Adoption Happenning Faster Today?

Cooley and Yorukoglu made some very interesting observations in their 2003 paper about the adoption of technology. They suggested that as a society we are adopting technology much faster today. Their observations are summarized in the table below.

Invention	Year Invented	Years to Adoption
		by 25% households
Electricity	1873	46
Telephone	1876	35
Automobile	1886	55
Airplane	1903	64
Radio	1906	22
TV	1926	26
VCR	1952	34
Microwave Oven	1953	30
Personal Computer	1975	16
Cellular Phone	1983	13
Internet	1991	7

What are the reasons for this? Let us know what you think are the reasons for this. Let me put forth mine to start a discussion:

• Technology is being produced at cheaper cost.
  
• Society today is "rich" and can afford to buy the technology.
• Technology has become a part of our daily lives in work and play and we have become dependent on it.
  
• Technology is used to fill time and space in our lives.