Few
years ago, I visited by chance, a village lying somewhere in the
midst of ranges of western ghat mountains that line up along the west
coast of India. In this mountainous region, huge water reservoirs
have been built over the years to provide water to the big cities.
Yet, if one climbs up on one of the surrounding hills, he is likely
to encounter many villages that have perennial water shortage and
women folk have to walk long distances just to fetch water for
household needs. The village I visited was one such village with no
assured water supply, which meant that whatever little agriculture
land was in the vicinity could be cultivated only during monsoon
months. This also ensured that villagers were all poor, with very
little farm income. Poverty of the people from the village could be
seen everywhere. It was a very depressing kind of site. Yet, I saw on
top of few shanty houses in the village, tell-tale satellite dishes
projecting upwards in the sky, which obviously meant that they had TV
sets in their houses.
Being
curious, I checked up with a villager, who said many of the houses
have TV sets. I asked him about the electrical power. Where do they
get it? and can they afford it? I was surprised to hear that no one
has electrical connection in the village. They just can not afford
it. They use solar power to switch on TV sets for one or 2 hours
every evening. Then I saw few poles fitted with latest low
consumption lights fitted on them with a solar panel at the top. He
said in the nights, the village is well lit. All these solar panels
have been given to the village by some charity organizations and it
does not cost anything for the villagers to get lights for their
houses and streets. During that visit, I had realised, what solar
power really means for countless number of remote villages spread all
over India.
At
other end of the economic spectrum, we have large corporate houses,
who would not think twice before spending millions to make their
industrial or commercial complexes lighted up so that they glitter
and shine in night just to show their brand image. Though I have
nothing against commercial organizations spending their own or
shareholder's money on lighting up their campuses as if every day is
a Deepavali day, it is definitely not something that promotes green
energy initiatives.
Tata
Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate company headquartered
in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It encompasses seven business sectors:
communications and information technology, engineering, materials,
services, energy, consumer products and chemicals. Tata Group has
over 100 operating companies with each of them operating
independently. The combined market capitalisation of all the 32
listed Tata companies was INR 6.8 Trillion ($ 109 billion) as of
March 2014. Tata Capital is a finance company from this group that
fulfills the financial needs of retail and institutional customers in
India. It was established in 2007 as a wholly owned subsidiary of
Tata Sons and is registered with the Reserve Bank of India as a
systemically important non-deposit taking non-banking financial
company (NBFC). The company has offices in several Indian cities. It
has its head office at a campus at Thane not far from the commercial
capital of India, Mumbai. The company has given a very modern
sounding name to its Thane campus and calls it as 'i-think Techno
campus' for whatever reasons.
In
January 2014, the company inaugurated a novel permanent demonstration
set up to create an impact and increase awareness of the people with
regard to the use of renewable energy. The demonstration set up is a
cluster of six artificial trees made from metal pipe structures and
fibre-reinforced plastic trunks and leaves. The system has been
grouted into the flooring and is designed to withstand all weather
conditions. Mounted on top of these artificial trees is a cluster of
14 solar panels that generate electrical power from sun light. The
‘trees’ self-illuminate and light up the garden from dusk to
dawn, producing close to 750 watts of energy. The garden lights have
been retrofitted with LED bulbs that consume less electricity as
compared to conventional incandescent or CFL bulbs. Company says that
the design iconography used in the ‘tree’ is executed in an
aesthetically appealing manner. The whole setup is visually appealing
and makes a strong statement about the environment and energy
conservation.
The
company has aptly named this demonstration set up as “Surya Aranya'
or Forest of the Sun. It is a first-of-its-kind project in India.
The aim is to spread a strong message with regard to energy
conservation. Company feels that the demonstration set up could be
replicated on a much larger scale. And hope that civic bodies pick up
the concept. Projects like Surya Aranya could also be used in housing
societies. While the initial cost is high, in the long run, the
energy savings will justify the cost.
Coming
to think of it, “ Surya Aranya” is an initiative well worth
copying by corporates having large campuses, housing societies with
internal roads that need lighting and Government establishments.
Benefits are two fold. Firstly the campuses would looks aesthetically
much more appealing and secondly it would cut down electricity bills.
29th
April 2014
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