Ooh Power

Before i start writing on Power let me remind those people who know about me a bit, that this post if has positive correlation with my work then it should be considered spurious.
[:-P]
For those who dont, I joined UBS Service Center-India (ISC) last year as a off-shore support team for the European Power & Gas Desk of UBS located at London.
It is a separate story that the desk got scrapped thanks to the "Sub-Prime".
Well itz strange but i was almost losing my job in India, for "Sub-Prime" in USA, because the notional-losses from it of UBS till date is approx 50B USD.
But this story deserves a post of it own.

Power now, is one of the necessity's of life.
Like Water or Air we can-not live with-out it.
We definitely have a come a long way from the methods of cooking developed by the cave-women (i am not being feminist) over a fire kept burning for days to the latest MICROWAVE Oven.
The effort definitely has diminished but i would add the complication has been more.
It summer months now & my flat-mate & myself complain every-weekend afternoon that we should have a air-cooler if not a air-conditioner.
& today who can live with-out a refrigerator.
ooh i missed out the TV, WashingMachine, Computer,......... the list goes on.
I think i have made my-self clear that we have shifted to a life where we can-not live without power.

The generation of Power or Electricity takes place at the Power Plants using Coal. Though not popular in India but some plants use Heavy Oil, Natural Gas, Bio-Fuels as inputs. Hydro-Power-Plants is another source. Nuclear, Wind are the 2 undependable sources.
There are some more innovative Power generation techniques of which i will tell you one. I dont know who came up with this idea but i must say this was brilliant.
In UK the Power is a free-market commodity. Hence the cost of per unit electricity varies over the day. The demand & the price rises steadily from early 7:00 till 9:00. stays steady for the rest of the morning & early afternoon. Then from late afternoon around 17:00 it climbs again till 19:30-20:00 & drops off till 23:00. where from it remains steady till early morning.
This extraordinary Power Generation unit buys electricity in the Off-Peak Hours & uses the electricity to pump up water from the base of a hillock to a reservoir at the top of it. & when the price climbs to a certain high he lets the water flow down & generates electricity which he sells off right then.
This method though innovative, shows the opportunity-capture by some intelligent & street-wise individual, who could see that there is a arbitrage & how to generate profit from it. But this technique only transfers the generation from 1 time-point to another. It does not create.
The wind power plants are considered to be the most un-reliable source of electricity. There has to be an steady wind-force of minimum 10KMPH. & if there isn't then there is no supply. No-one would like to be dependent on such a source.
The nuclear power plants come with its unique difficulties. One of which is if there is some disruption in 1 then all the similar plants have to be switched off until the cause is found & rectified in all if necessary. The other is even more interesting. The nuclear plants produce electricity at a steady rate. So at off-peak times the generation might supersede the amount required. France is a country with such situation. But Europe now has one common grid. Hence it can sell off the electricity to other neighbouring countries.
The cost of Crude-Oil (though mainly driven by speculation than by supply shortages) is significantly high to not think of Heavy-Oil as a source.
Natural-Gas power plants is yet to be popular. Mainly because of the huge volume that needs to be transported. Though LNG tankers have made things easier.
Coal Power Plants are the most abundantly found. The technology has been near-perfected (though there may be many avenues to track). But these plants are one of the major source of industrial pollution. & the alarming way the world-temperature is increasing we need to be bit more concerned.
Hydro-electricity is at the first look the best. But again huge dams & are a major source of controversy with major ecological change (& ignoring the villages). Also a dam creates water-supply disruption further down-stream. And perennial rivers is not very commonly seen.

Indian standpoint: Coal-Pollution a constrain though most abundant. Oil-Too Pricey, Gas-Supply limited currently. & Iran-Pakistan-India LNG Pipeline still seems a dream, Nuclear-Risky & demand problem(we are not yet in a position to distribute to huge distances) ignoring the current Left issue, Hydro- Perennial river are limited & amount of rain-fall not consistent.

This brings us to the standard question what should we do.
What i believe is that like most necessary things in life this is also something which every-one of us would have to make a effort.
Saving electricity in every small ways possible. Switching off monitor when not in use. Switching off power-plug-points when not in use. There are more small simple ways which all of us have heard of.
Personally i would suggest that we install Power-inverters & if possible solar-panels on the roof-top. A Solar-Panel on the roof would augment the supply of electricity & coupled with inverters would ensure a significant reduction is demand for electricity.
The government can also try to incorporate solar-power as much as it can. A suitable study & execution of the whole thing would reduce the power demand. & for India to keep growing as dramatically as we have been doing with keeping our power bills within justified levels SOLAR ENERGY is perhaps a direction we would have to look into. We definitely need more persuasive practical & meaningful research in this.


I would like to end this extra-long blog with a wish
May the people of India & the world in total see the folly of the ways we are steaming ahead & rectify our-self to save the world & make life easy & more enriching than it currently is.