Energy, let's save it!

Imagine

"Imagine"

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Tata Nano’s much needed revamp

If you want to cut a tree in ten hours then sharpen the axe for nine hours. Tata Nano’s catastrophic failure in terms of product positioning clearly acumen the purpose of my first sentence. Tata motors’ ambitious project on the world’s least expensive car left people around the world hankering to have a glimpse of it in auto expos. The project was unique, leveraged the benefits of being the trendsetter in low cost car market, while the 100 thousand price tag & controversies created the much needed initial hype around the product. People started turning their heads seeing a Nano on the road & everyone consented that this revolutionary product is going to shape the future of four wheeler markets.

So what went wrong?

Tata motors should have done an innovative, extensive and accurate market research in order to understand the demographic & non demographic traits of Indians prior to the launch. The only major USP behind the marketing campaign was the low price tag which caught lots of eyeballs but went awry while catering to the needs & sentiments.

Now that the market dynamics have changed substantially, it has got very few tough measures to survive. The new brand positioning targeted by the “celebrating awesomeness” campaign must adapt to youth sentiments & concerns. Customizing the vehicle and making it an Eco friendly car will serve this awesome purpose & people will take pride in driving a Nano rather than viewing it as a cheap substitute.

happy Ganesh Chaturthi

Lord Ganesha is worshiped throughout the world as the god of education.knowledge,wealth & wisdom.We worship Ganesha first before initiation of any ritual as per the provisions offered to him by his father lord Shiva.Ganesha's ubiquitous presence at all places justifies why people believe him to be the deity who grants prosperity & success during adversities.Great Lakes Gurgaon students organized Ganesha Chaturthi with huge enthusiasm to seek the blessings of the almighty for their overall academic endeavors and well being.

Ganesha Chaturthi celebrations at great lakes happened to be a sweet remembrance of the golden school days.I have spent sleepless nights during my school days waiting curiously to watch my school buddies marching towards the school gate wearing recently bought attire with a package containing coconut,incense sticks & fruits.It used to be a festivity season for all of us spanning over a week long working on different activities around the school like cleaning,painting & decorating to invite elephant headed Vinayaka into our premises.The best part about it all was witnessing new kids joining the club scripting Om sign on a chanted slate.The clay made Ganesha comes into life once the puja starts & the idol itself teaches us life's greatest lessons like the big belly prescribing us to digest all the good and bad things in life wholeheartedly,the broken tusk teaching us that a sacrifice is needed for the pursuit of wisdom,large ears to listen to others carefully and the big head suggesting us to think out of the box.I wish everyone on this planet learns these lessons from the idol of Vinayaka.The mouse that he uses teaches us to be humble towards everybody & the sweets he holds are the testimonies to hard work that is needed to add sweetness into our lives. Ganesha was born due to his mother Parvati's requirements for guarding her and the brave Ganesha guarded it till his head got severed by his own father Shiva.The name Ganesha was given by Shiva because "Gana" means followers of Shiva & "Isha" means lord.Man's eternal strive to be part of the nature is clearly portrayed in Ganesha's idol which is a combination of four creatures-man,elephant,mouse & snake.Ganesha signifies the nature of elephants who are very warm and don't kill anybody in the jungle but become ruthless for the evils.I wish all readers a happy Ganesh Chaturthi and pray for the well being of planet.

What excites us Indians the most

What excites us Indians the most?

This question struck me recently after the Mumbai gang rape incident. The answers I got from my friends were very diverse. Some said it is cricket, some said politics & few said Bollywood movies. I agree with them all but my question was what excites us the most and I couldn't find a justified answer. We are ready to break houses of cricketers if they lose a match, we demolish a famous Mosque for some historical myth, we even go insane for rising fuel prices. All of these actions we perform is tantamount to our cultural beliefs, our collective ego and economical priorities. But we never rise up to a cause which is basic and will affect our generations. Our ancestors were rich in knowledge but for them priority was our well being but we Indians have become so selfish today that we don't think about our children even. We have grown a habit of acceptance to whatever bad is happening around us. Media looses focus on a topic as soon as it sees the TRP going down. We can't blame the media because they are running a business and they are no way justice delivering agencies. The TRP goes down because we are not really concerned about the girl who suffered; rather we forget everything as soon as our family members are safe. The justice delivery system in India is slow, the government policies are bad, police is inefficient & a lot of other excuses to hide our own inability is causing the problems our society is facing today. We never react to a person passing some lewd comment to a girl on the road because we think it is casual but how about a person passing a comment at you & that too a vulgar one. We think it is casual in India but the person who passed the comment, gains the confidence & moves a step forward. In India every 20 minutes a woman is raped and it makes the woman of India less confident & more pessimistic. We teach our daughters to stay at home as much as possible but isn't it hampering India's growth as they can add so much value to our economy. The day we won't be able to digest our food while listening to a rape case, that day will call for a true national awakening.If we don't wake up now there will be a time when we will be like Taliban countries & believe me that will be a hell of a country for our daughters.

 Our country derives it's roots from ancient religious mythologies & I remember the Mahabharata where lord Krishna came for the rescue of Draupati. We need the intervention of lord Krishna now to save our daughters from the evil and Krishna resides in each one of us.If we don't act now our future generation will never forgive us for the mess we have created for them as a country. 

future of energy

RENEWABLES IN INDIA

Renewable Energy in India: addressing future opportunities for companies.

As we are fast venturing into the energy climate era & there is a growing concern of rise in global average temperature which in turn is becoming disastrous day by day. So every country is looking into renewable sources of energy addition as an important factor for their economy & climate. Renewable energy sector in India is far lagging behind in terms of utilization of solar or wind potential due to non deployment of large scale solar or wind power plants .The main reasons for this is lack of proper planning, lack of effective subsidy schemes, land acquisition problems (large scale solar or wind power plants require huge land) & bottlenecks faced by companies to recover the subsidies announced by government. The electricity sector in India had an installed capacity of 223.343GW as of March 2013, the world’s fifth largest. Captive power plants generate an additional 34.444GW. Non renewable power plants constitute 87.55% of the installed capacity & 12.45% of renewable capacity.

A new World Bank program known as renewable energy mapping program will carry out mapping of renewable energy resources that will for the first time produce rich, nationwide data for each country. Coordinated and financed by the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program , the initiative will cover mapping of solar, wind, biomass, and small hydro-power potential.Thus the government will be able to view the granular data to understand it’s solar or wind potential which till now is underutilized. India’s cumulative grid tied renewable energy capacity (excluding large hydro) stands at 26.9GW,of which 68.9% comes from wind making India fifth largest in wind. Solar PV contributes 4.59% to the total renewable energy generation. 

In December 2011, over 300 million Indian citizens had no access to electricity. Much of India doesn't have an electric grid which provides scope for distributed power systems which are grid independent and small. Due to rapid economic expansion, India has one of the world’s fastest growing energy markets. Limited domestic fossil fuel reserves & the environmental constraints put up by the dirty fuels is witness to the future renewable energy prospects in India. The development of grid interactive renewable power took off with the coming into force of the Electricity Act 2003, which, among other things, provides for regulatory interventions for promotion of renewable energy sources through determination of tariff, Specifying renewable purchase obligation (RPO), Facilitating grid connectivity, Promotion of development of market.

The international energy agency estimates that India will add between 600GW to 1200GW of additional new power generation capacity by 2050.India is most active player in wind power sector & a rich destination for companies wanting to acquire wind power assets. The national solar mission, under the National Action Plan on Climate Change aims to add 20,000MW of solar power by 2022.Indian solar panel manufacturers are dominated by cheap export from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and USA.India has been ranked as 7^th in solar photo-voltaic cell production & ranked as 9^th in solar thermal power generation. This growth is exponential due to several private players entering the business and various subsidies & reforms put up by the government of India.

The major players in solar power are as follows.

Moser Baer Photovoltaic Limited, Tata BP solar, photon solar energy system, HHV solar technologies private Ltd,Titan energy systems Limited, Sun energy systems, Applied materials, signet solar,Punj Lloyd delta renewable, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd,Reliance industries limited etc.

 In March 2007 the Indian government announced a semiconductor policy under its Special Incentive Package Scheme (SIPS) which will provide 20% of the capital expenditure during the first 10 years for semiconductor industries, including manufacturing activities related to solar PV technology located in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and 25% for industries not located in an SEZ. India has among the highest solar irradiance in the world which makes solar PV all the more attractive for India. Odisha and Andhra Pradesh  also houses some of the best quality reserves of silica (basic feedstock for metal grade Si). India has demonstrated globally proven metallurgical processing capacities and capabilities. India is already an established low cost producer and assembler of solar PV cells and modules. The major barrier for solar projects is their high upfront costs while putting up the project. Companies around the world are planning & developing production facilities that run into gig watts while India has not yet put enough on R & D for implementation of such projects. While it is obvious that to keep in pace with the growing economy India will add renewable assets to utilize its wind & solar power fully.

Wind power plants face land acquisition problems as well as the reduced subsidy & high operation costs are driving large companies to sell off their wind energy assets, which is non-core for them, to renewable energy based companies. As far as hydro sector is considered it is facing several issues like long wait for forest & land clearances, inter state disputes on water sharing, inadequate transmission capacity, large construction periods & geological surprises as in Uttarakhand tragedy.

Thus as the Indian society is getting more aware of the clean fuel compared with the bad carbon footprints left by fossil fuels the renewable energy sector in India is confident & poised for growth.

THE THEORY OF DOTS

We should never judge or view our lives connecting the dots forwards as future is extremely uncertain & volatile. We should connect the dots backwards as every dot in your life had a purpose. Whether it seemed a black dot does not matter. When you will be joining the dots backwards all of them seems right to you now. I will be definitely connecting my life’s dots backwards after 30 years or so & all of my decisions will seem fair to me as I did justice to each of them & the black dots won’t come to any picture then.

After graduating from my undergraduate engineering college my times flew in a nut shell. But it all seems fair now when I look back & connect the dots. I got transformed into a whole new professional avatar. I underwent a whole new era of aluminium industry witnessing the largest single site aluminium smelter of Vedanta Aluminium Limited in whole Asia being nurtured from a green field stage to the verge of a successful investment in a very short span of three years. It was fascinating & exciting to be with such a young bunch of group who were truly driven by passions & hard work. Delights came either in the form of a senior’s appraisal or a brand new gadget. I was either busy with a new challenging project or partying at a new wonderful hangout. I derived a lot of skills from my colleagues or senior managers either in the form of technical knowledge, team playing or at times decision making. It was always a new learning experience & a feel of achievement when a successful project was getting implemented. I got delighted seeing the machines going into action & the programs driving them fine, the things which I fantasized about during my engineering. I got a lot of fat, I toured lots of kilometres on my royal enfield  & made some amazing friends who are going to stay with my life forever. I learnt that it takes lots of sweat to generate a product and make it sellable. It was a challenge every time we received a new costumer complaint & we used to take oaths together to remove the flaw from the processes to ensure the costumer stays back with us. The business of aluminium metal fascinated me a lot just like the fascination I had for machines during my college life. We got successes in our team either implementing 5S on the shop floor or getting our smelter site ISO50001 (Enms) accreditation. All these fast & busy things kept me out from my blog for whole three years.

The fascination of machines grew towards the fascination of business & I resigned from my job to study business processes at great lakes institute of energy management & research. I observed the nuances caused by energy issues on the world economy. The resource primary for any business or basic living today is energy which is the core concern of almost all key policymakers around the world. I realized that the machines I had always fascinated about or my bike itself will stop the moment it will lack energy. So the biggest contribution to the society one can make is to make the hotter, flatter & crowded world energy efficient as well as energy sufficient, by the mean time sustaining the mother nature for our upcoming generations. The time has come for a true global revolution where we will witness a tremendous change in energy structure of economies either in the form up scaling of current technologies or whole new alternatives derived from the nature itself making the planet self sustainable with energy for us.

Many people complain about life not being fair for them when it is a universal truth that life isn’t fair for any person at all. It is always about making the moments count so that it seems fair in future when we connect the dots backwards.