Sustainable Energy Technologies and Resources

We had two sessions on sustainable energy technologies and resources. The sessions were held by Jukka Paatero on 15 and 18 November 2010. One course material, “Off-grid electricity for developing countries”, was quite interesting, partly because it referred to E.F. Schumacher and his thoughts and visions.

Here is what I got from these sessions.

Issue?

• 2 billion have no access to modern forms of energy
• Lack of energy has implications on health (indoor open fire) and on income (time spent on collecting wood)

Why is the situation like this?

• Lack of access to a grid (remote villages)
• Meter reading and billing in remote areas might not be feasible.
• High initial costs for poor households.

Centralized solutions?

From the production and distribution point of view, larger electric systems are more feasible compared to smaller ones, since;

1. It is easier to balance the variations in the grid when the system is large. Momentum of the system increases with increasing grid size. This momentum is the system frequency that acts as a buffer for instantaneous changes. This makes uniform distribution of electrical energy easier.

2. The efficiency of electric conversion systems such as hydropower plants increases with increasing plant size.

P.S: Centralized systems are typically not environmentally friendly.

Exciting decentralized energy production and distribution concepts

• wind battery charging
• micro solar
• micro hydro
• community involvement
• low cost connections
• local ownership
• local solutions

Social vs. technical issues

The main issue regarding electrification seems to be social instead of being technical. There are many conflicting interests when topic in question is energy. Wishes of the community, governance and electricity supplier are not always matching. One example of this can be an electricity supplier company that refuses to provide electricity lines to a school located in an urban slum. The supplier company would argue that the lines supplied would be misused by residents of the slums. And by misuse I mean that they would steal electricity as the people living in slums cannot afford otherwise. One of the topics of the workshop was on this issue and I think it was a good exercise.

Conclusions

As problems related to energy vary depending on the location, solutions tend to be local. I see that there is a local adaptation when the resources are scarce. On the other hand, in developed countries, it seems to me, that the technology and economic power is used to provide abundant energy to the citizens, which in turn leads to excessive consumption of energy without considering implications of this consumption on environment.

It is inspiring to see people and organizations working to provide technologies and knowledge that will make people’s lives better.

I especially liked the following sentence from E.F. Schumacher:

“The gift of material goods makes people dependent. The gift of knowledge sets them free”