#72 – Curtains up for a new dawn in energy conservation

If you are a person who saves energy by using fluorescent lamps during broad day-light time with your curtains closed, this is a message for you, my Lord! If you are not, and you are a conscious energy-saving citizen, then again, this is a message to you, my friend! If you are an engineer who does not want to end up in software corridors and want to do some technical innovation (at least for a final year project), this one is very much for you, my pal! So, what is it?

Save Energy - that is for YOU, ME and ALL

Switched on lights in rooms with curtains closed to natural light is a quite common phenomenon. While it takes a behavioural change for people individually to resist from using artificial lights instead of natural light, and of course much more persuasion, this wrong can be corrected with another of those smart gadgets.

I suggest the development of a natural light meter placed at the windows, which is by circuit, connected to the light switches. The switch boards shall have a visual display. Whenever a light is switched on when there is sufficient natural light beckoning to be used outside the windows, this circuit senses it and lets out a display message at the switch board, besides delaying the ‘switch-on’ action until a further command is received. Clean and simple! The user shall simply open the window curtains for his light requirements.

If the user still wants the light on, he simply has to press the switch again to get it glowing. By this, every time the user is opting for artificial light when sufficient natural light is available, he is cautious that he is doing so. There may be certain genuine circumstances when artificial lights are required or when curtains can’t be opened. Hence, this technique shall help those situations too.

Technology wise, all it takes is a light meter, (you should know this as the cricket umpires use to test our patience in late evening test matches!), a switch-control unit and a connecting wiring network. As simple as it is said, some curious final year electrical engineer too can go on to design it. At the scale in which energy conservation is required, why not a Philips or Crompton Greeves come up with a commercial product to do its bit for the society?

Time to draw the curtains open on this issue!

– GS

If you have a creative idea to tackle any social problem, please deposit into this idea bank by mailing it to sparkyourideas@gmail.com. Licenced to be as crazy as you wish, because all breakthrough innovations were once considered only crazy ideas!!!

#70 – Power pooling in streetlamps …. can cut down energy use to a third!

In cities, towns, highways, we do have street lights that would typically be powered on at 6.30 PM in the evening till at least 5 AM in the morning, roughly around 11 hours. The traffic in most of the cities would condense by 11 PM so that not all lights are required to lit the roads. We can have alternate lights turned off or at least every third light turned off during these non-peak hours. Or we can consider switching off alternate lights on those nights close to full moon days slowly changing to turning off every third light as no moon days approach – remember, only after 11 P.M. On a large scale implemented over the country, this could save huge amount of power, on a long run.

Is this the road to energy conservation?

While one can turn off manually, which is very in-efficient and unreliable, we can choose to do it by developing an electronic circuit which is intelligent enough to turn on/off lights depending upon the situation. This circuit will be planted at the electrical sub-station. On the high end, one can place light and traffic sensors to make it very efficient.

This was told as a feasibility by a Civil Professor to me(Electrical student), that an Electronic student can pursue such project and benefit the society.

– Sundeep

If you have a creative idea to tackle any social problem, please deposit into this idea bank by mailing it to sparkyourideas@gmail.com. Licenced to be as crazy as you wish, because all breakthrough innovations were once considered only crazy ideas!!!

#65 – A different “change” in a system where change is the most used word!

“We need Change”

This sentence is most heard in the following three places: In a countdown,

No. 3 ………. Obama’s campaign

No. 2 …………Software employees

No. 1 ………..The Indian public transport bus

Without doubt, the town bus has seen the word “change” used more frequently than any other medium. But this idea suggests a different ‘change’ that the town bus has never seen or heard before.

The bus ticket is one peculiar interesting creations of man that ends up in umpteen ways depending on the user. It may end up in a bin, or with a brilliant haiku written on its back (just the right size! ), or as a collage medium, or in a checker’s bag. Imagine the number of reams of paper that ended up as a bus ticket over the number of years since it came into existence! Imagine how minimization of paper use in offices and administrations is called for with such intensity to conserve trees! All it needed was some one to connect the dots. Here is how we connect.

Recycle this? See how….

This idea suggests to use recycled bus tickets to minimize paper use to a greater extent. A simple reusable thick paper (or card) ticket which can accommodate 10 different entries for date and time and can be dropped into a drop box placed near the two exits of the bus shall be the solution instead of the conventional one. Extreme thoughts can build in intelligent chips and RFID into it too!

The bus ticket can be a thick paper or a card where in the conductor fills the date and time of issue (or) trip number for every user (manual or automated). This will enable the same ticket to be used by ten people and allows to differentiate among them. So when we purchase a ticket, we get a card for the ticket’s denomination with the time stamp in it. When we get down from the bus, we simply dump into either of the drop boxes positioned near the two exits. After the trip the conductor collects the dropped tickets from the drop boxes and gets ready to give tickets for the next trip. Each card shall be used for ten times with different timestamps. To differentiate between cards used in different buses, the route number or bus number shall be printed on it. If it is tough to comprehend, just relate this to the library cards kept inside each books in the manual entry libraries!! And you will get the picture.

On an advance level, RFID technology can identify the ticket to its matching bus so that our citizen (! ) does not use the same ticket in multiple buses for his with-out episodes. Intelligent chips can replace these cards, allowing for greater timestamps to be filled in, thereby eliminating paper usage completely. A single ticket chip, which is the property of the bus, can be used for thousands of passengers!

At a basic level, this idea is capable of reducing paper usage upto ten times with minimal discomfort. At an advanced level, it can eliminate the use of papers altogether from public transport and save acres of forests.

This is one change we really need from the bus conductor very soon!!

– GS

If you have a creative idea to tackle any social problem, please deposit into this idea bank by mailing it to sparkyourideas@gmail.com. Licenced to be as crazy as you wish, because all breakthrough innovations were once considered only crazy ideas!!!

Day # 48 – Why should we add fuel to the falling floor? Let it fall on its will

What goes up comes down. Everybody knows this fact. Some say it is Newton’s. Some say it is karma. Some say it may be a CWG roof. I say it is an elevator.

This idea can cut down electricity consumption by all elevators, in every building of the world, by HALF. How? By switching on free fall mode! Seems gravity is still not fully used to its worth by mankind. Elevators around the world are still making use of electricity to move downward too. This is no gravity-defying stunt that they perform. So why not let them fall on their own will listening to the voice of the earth.

I appeal for the sharp brains to develop gravity elevators, which will consume electricity only to go upwards from floor to floor. Technology can definitely invent and improvise appropriate traction control, free-fall regulation and brake systems for this gravity powered elevator. Measures should be taken to ensure the cost of such free-fall controls do not exceed electricity use in the first place. And then when this elevator comes down every time, it will do so on its free will, attracted by the gravitational force.

Multiply the idea by the no. of elevators around the world and the no. of up-and-downs they make per hour. You will understand the GRAVITY of this idea. I was actually surprised when I googled, because I could not find any such mechanism tried so far. Definitely it will not be because it never occurred to anyone. May be because it did not bug them forcefully.

How many times do you switch off the engines of your motor bike when riding downhill? Now is the time for us to switch off our elevators downhill now to switch on some other light some other place some other time.

–   GS, Spark n’ Beyond

If you have a creative idea to tackle any social problem, please deposit into this idea bank by mailing it to sparkyourideas@gmail.com. Licenced to be as crazy as you wish, because breakthrough innovations were once considered only crazy ideas!!!

Day # 37 – Black is Green

This idea may not be the Nobel level out-of-the box idea but in terms of impact, it can definitely save the earth. First up, ask yourself some simple questions, do you remember to switch off the lights from a room when you leave the room in your home? How often do you stay alone in a home where all rooms are lit up? How often do you bother to switch off the toilet lamp after you finish soo-soo in the mid of the night? And how often do you close the curtains and light up your room in broad daylight hours?
You get the drift right. We may use CFLs and save electricity to a great extent but the simplest way to save energy is by avoiding unwanted consumption. And this is a measure that requires no policing, monitoring, Governmental policies or cultural change. All it requires is some attention to detail and a motivation. Here are a few simple steps that everyone can follow:

1. Switch off lights that are not being used in your home. Right now, as you are reading this, turn around to see how many unwanted lights you can spot. And relax them!
2. Switch off the laptop/TV from plug every night.
3. Check if your mobile charger is on a perpetually plugged in “ON” mode. While it may enable you to use a simple plug-n-charge module, remember adding one more step of plug-n-switch-n-charge won’t harm you too much.
4. Not only you, persuade your room mate to follow the practice. Yes, sometimes at the cost of being mocked at by your roomie.
“Don’t behave as if this single light is causing global warming you Green bas***d…. This is just one light and after all we are paying for this. So why not use it?”
Not a very uncommon response eh? True. But don’t yield to it. This is the biggest challenge. How many times have you watched Anniyan/Aparajeet? Single irresponsible lights multiply in households, colonies, cities, nations and consume precious energy every day everywhere. Some one’s got to plug it out.
5. You practiced, You preached, Voila! You are a proud conservationist now.

– Gomathi Shankar K, Spark n’ Beyond.