Since distillation is considered energy intensive, reverse osmosis as a process was developed and found to be more economical as it works at low temperatures but higher pressures. “Reverse osmosis is highly effective in removing several impurities from water such as total dissolved solids (TDS), turbidity, asbestos, lead and other toxic heavy metals, radium, and many dissolved organics. The process will also remove chlorinated pesticides and most heavier-weight volatile organic compounds”.

http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water-education/quality-water-filtration-method.htm

The basic principle is difficult to explain but let me give it a try. Suppose we have two chambers separated by a membrane. On one side we have salt water and on the other side fresh drinking water. We know over a period of time the fresh water will move into the salt water and thus try to reduce the concentration on that side. This is what is called osmosis. Reverse osmosis means we want to squeeze the salt and make the fresh water go back (reverse). So essentially we need a suitable membrane (technical name semi-permeable membrane) that can withstand very high pressure and only allows water to flow to the fresh water side. If my explanation is not satisfactory see http://science.howstuffworks.com/reverse-osmosis.htm

This technology was used at the village level by many civil society organisations including the Byrraju Foundation, Nandi Foundation and many others to provide potable water to rural communities. Providing safe drinking water is seen as a good entry point for many social entrepreneurs in the villages of rural India.

Many times I hear people talk about renewable energy and mention wind energy as their solution to the problem.  It is a romantic notion that wind energy can be used to become independent of the electric grid. Wind is unstable as it varies in speed and direction. The device built to harness energy from the wind has to withstand both these stresses and has to be light weight. The energy that is harnessed from the wind has to be stored. Currently energy storage is done in batteries, which add to the initial cost and have a replacement cost that can be very high.

Wind velocities are better at a height than near the ground. Because of this the wind energy conversion device has to be placed on top of a tower. This again adds to the initial cost and makes repairs difficult.

Wind energy conversion devices have traditionally been used to do mechanical work, like pumping water (think of the Netherlands) or grinding flour. Nowadays they are thought of only for electricity generation. Twenty years ago there doubts about the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for wind energy as well. Today the view is that their EROI is very good.  See http://www.theoildrum.com/node/1863

I wrote this piece for Wake Up India – It was printed in the July- September 2011 edition and that has not come online as of yet.

(http://www.ts-adyar.org/content/magazines#Wake_Up_India)

Renewable Energy. Can it work for India?

Most people will confuse energy with electricity. This confusion has spread throughout media and can even be found in government planning. This may have to do with the way electricity is delivered to us through a hole in the wall. Electricity does not have an origin in plain sight as with any other fuel and yet we will equate it to primary energy.

The requirement for energy and electricity depends on where you live in India. We all know that there is an availability problem for electricity in rural areas and that urban area become paralysed without electricity. The primary fuels (energy sources) that are used to create electricity in India are coal, natural gas and oil. These fuels are commonly called ‘fossil fuels’ since they are mined from the earth and represent dead plant life from millennia before and us and are finite in availability.

Fossil fuels are also responsible for the phenomenon known as global warming since it is believed that the carbon dioxide they produce after combustion cannot be absorbed by the plant life of the earth at the same rate that they enter the atmosphere. This build up of carbon dioxide and other combustion products create a green house effect since they absorb and retain heat that should otherwise be rejected to outer space. This is how global warming happens and the end result is violent and unpredictable changes in rainfall, hurricanes and prolonged heating of certain parts of the world.

When you live in rural India your biggest energy consumption is for cooking and then for lighting. Cooking uses biomass in various forms like firewood, agriculture residue, twigs, and dung cake. This biomass for cooking is a sizable chunk (more than 2/3^rd ) of rural energy consumption. However very rarely will this very important source of energy find its way into any planning document. The focus is always on electricity

If you live in urban India and depending whether you are poor or rich your energy consumption will be different. The rich will use electricity and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and in some cases kerosene, primarily for cooking. If you are poor in urban India there are good chances of using firewood as the primary cooking fuel. This will explain the numerous firewood depots that can be found near the slums of any metropolis. Firewood is also the fuel of choice for rural eateries.

Most planning documents prepared by governmental or international agencies will talk about electricity and developing means to increase power generation. Though biomass is one of the biggest contributors to the energy consumption of the majority of our population, attempts made for the sustainable supply of biomass is limited.

When we talk about renewable energy what pops into the mind are windmills, solar devices, hydropower and for some strange reason nuclear power. Rarely does the renewable energy sector talk about biomass. Again this is due to the concentration on providing electricity rather than energy. India is also very rich in electricity generated by hydro power which as mentioned is a renewable resource.

The way to understand renewable energy is to think about it as the result of what is available in nature right now, rather than as a finite remnant from a distant past. Thus if we can convert or capture all the sunlight that falls on the world on a daily basis there would be sufficient energy available for everybody’s needs across the globe.

To quote from wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy)

“The total solar energy absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.”  (The solar energy that falls on the world in one hour is equivalent to the world energy consumption in 2002).
“Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth’s non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined.”

There are various problems associated with renewable energy that have prevented its widespread use. One of the biggest challenges is to create technologies that will allow the energy captured to be stored for use at a later time. The other challenges are with the variable nature of the input.

Take for instance wind energy, all of us know that wind speeds are highly variable and can change both speed and direction minute to minute. This gives designers of windmills many challenges. They have to account for the wide variation in speeds and the changes in direction. If you drive past any wind farm where there are multiple windmills installed, there are good chances that you will see rotor blades broken and therefore windmills not working. These catastrophic failures are an indication of how difficult it is to design across a highly variable speed and direction regime. Extremely modern designs make use of advances in material technology that help them build lighter and stronger wind mills that overcome the earlier flaws and perform better.

In the case of solar energy too there are variations in the input due to cloud cover or overcast days where the amount of sunlight reaching the earth is not sufficient for meaningful use. Sunlight can be captured and used for heating or otherwise through photovoltaic cells converted to electricity. However the storage problem is there for both conversions. Some of these conversion devices also tend to be very expensive and have poor efficiencies. Much of the research work around converting sunlight to electricity is around making high efficiency low cost photo voltaic cells. If you think about it all plants are using sunlight and fixing carbon dioxide thus increasing their mass (referred to as biomass). So a plant by its photosynthetic process overcomes the problem of conversion of sunlight, build up of carbon dioxide and storage of energy.

The answer to the question posed in the title is that Renewable Energy is already working in a big way for India. Biomass energy is providing a very large part of the energy requirement of the rural population and for the poor in urban areas. Hydro power provides around 14% of the electricity produced in the country according to the International Energy Agency¹ and 25% according to Asian Development Bank². The potential identified and not exploited could contribute over 60% of electricity requirement but the investment requirements will keep this sector contributing between 20 to 30% of current requirement. In a report by the Global Energy Network Institute³ states “the technical potential of these renewables exceeds the present installed generation capacity.”

The potential of biomass has again been missed in many of these reports. The cooking energy requirement if met by anaerobic digestion of all household waste can free biomass that can potentially create small power generating units of 25kW to 50 kW in each village of India. This means that these villages after meeting their internal requirements could sell power to the national grid.

Mistaking electricity for energy has led to this situation whereby planners have missed on how simple biogas technology at a household level can free up sufficient biomass to create as much energy as the country needs for current and future demand. In simpler terms renewable energy can work for India.

Ref 1. (http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2010/key_stats_2010.pdf pg21)

Ref 2. (http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/Hydropower-Devt-India/Hydropower-Devt-India.pdf pg 15)

Ref 3. (http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/research/renewable-energy-potential-of-india/Renewable%20Energy%20Potential%20for%20India.pdf)

It is always annoying for me to see electric water heaters. The annoyance comes because in India we produce most of our electricity using coal. The overall thermal efficiency of a power plant running on coal wont exceed 30%. The electricity is transported over hundreds of kilometers (with a 20% loss during transmission and distribution). Then after many step down transformers (each with its on loss of heat) the electricity comes to your home. Now you attach a device that converts the electricity back to heat and that is your electric water heater. If you are not able to see that conceptually this a waste of a “good” resource like electricity, then I am afraid you wont like what I am about to say next.

There should be a move to ban electric water heaters across the country and the world. Electric water heaters waste electricity. They also waste a lot of good quality water as you wait for the hot and cold water to mix till it is the right temperature for you. In my house we have not installed electric water heaters. We heat up a small vessel with good quality water over a gas stove and then mix this in a bucket with cold water and get our desired temperature. It may be a bit inconvenient when there are many guests at home but it helps regulate water use as well. In Chennai good quality water is always to be conserved.

My work took me away from Chennai to Hyderabad and I was staying in a gated community that had ensured the houses had solar water heaters on the roof tops and also built a pressurized water system rather than one based on overhead tanks. The 16 months that I lived in that house were like being in heaven. The high pressure shower that very quickly adjusted its temperature meant an extremely refreshing start to the day and an excellent tonic before going to sleep. Our electricity bill would come to around Ts. 300/- per month since it was also fitted with Compact Fluorescent Lamps.

The IFMR Trust recently released a report along with the World Resources Institute on clean energy options for the base of the pyramid in India.  A previous Villgro post described the impact this report should have on energy entrepreneurs and investors but the general BOP practitioner can learn a lot from this new research as well.  The document starts from a Macro level view of the market potential and then goes into more detail about specific issues that certain companies face.  All of the information paints a highly valuable picture of challenges at the BOP that we all can learn from.

One of the first things to note was the surprising variations in market size.  Of the $2.11 billion estimated aggregate potential market for the four sectors studied in the report more than 96% of it was for Decentralized Renewable Energy Sources leaving only 1.2% for solar home systems ($27.39 million), 0.8% for Solar Lanterns ($18.58 million), and 1.1% for Energy-Efficient Cook stoves ($24.13 million).  While every report’s numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, seeing these low numbers should prompt BOP practitioners to try and understand the total market size potential for their own industry so as not to be blindsided by limited growth opportunities or high competition crowding that, if this report is correct, one can imagine will happen in this one.

Another benefit of this document is that it paints a picture of several businesses and the immediate challenges that they face.  For example, one of the challenges discussed is the charitable distribution schemes that distort the local market.  A real life example of this is how the free kerosene stoves and televisions promised by the Tamil Nadu has made the citizens there assume that the energy efficient cook stoves should be given to them for free as well creating a hard market for the energy efficient cook stove companies to enter as most of their customers are reluctant to pay for the product.  This report is chalk full of other ideas like this that can quickly educate someone about what issues to look out for in the BOP.

A relevant issue that is pointed out in the document relates to incorrect assumptions that can be easily made in impact assessment and market acceptance.  This particular situation reveals that some BOP energy companies might look more beneficial and feasible on the surface because they state their impact based on the assumed value of the fuel their clients are saving.  You would figure there is no problem with this but while an energy efficient stove might have a significant reduction in the amount of fuel needed, it can’t automatically be assumed that it will be of value to the end user. This is because in many cases they get their fuel for free by just gathering biomass and burning it.  When simple situations like these are illustrated throughout this document it becomes easier for one to imagine where there are incorrect assumptions about their own impact or market.

The rest of the report includes an overall introduction to India’s rural BOP clean energy market, the specific systems and products in place, and the roles of different players like NGOs and Governments.  It is a great primer for their intended audience but also has a lot of insight that can be utilized across many sectors utilizing social innovation in India.  You can view a copy of it here.

IFMR Centre for Development Finance and the World Resources Institute are coming out with a report focusing on clean energy options for the base of pyramid in India, this report is titled “Power to the people” which was released in Mumbai on the 28th of September 2010 in front of a host of social sector investors and companies.

This article introduces the realities of rural electrification and the basis for their upcoming report.  It showcases a few significant concepts such as electricity access statistics, reliability, and the current market for alternative energy sources.

In India only 40% of rural households have access to electricity and 85% depend on kerosene for lighting and firewood for cooking.  However the problem is actually worse than that because as an apple farmer quoted in the article astutely said “Most houses have electrical connections, but what is the use? We have power for a few hours a day. Even when there is electricity, it is barely enough to operate one or two light bulbs. We cannot rely on it.”  This farmer makes an important point but this leads to an even deeper issue – imagine the trouble that commercial companies would have trying to rely on such energy distribution. How can India move manufacturing, processing, and industry jobs closer to the villages if the electricity isn’t even reliable enough for consumer use?

As the article goes on to illustrate, there are companies such as SBA Hydro which are selling clean energy products and services directly to the Base of the Pyramid population.  The SBA Hydro company sells hydroelectric power but there is also SELCO which sells solar power and Husk Power Systems which sells biomass power to name a few others.  Many of these company’s customers actually have access to electricity but as the quote above illustrates, the current available electricity just isn’t enough.

With SBA Hydro’s $1.26m investment from Acumen Fund allowing them to reach 6000 households, SELCO reaching over 120,000 households in the last 10 years, and Husk being able to reach over 10,000 households you can see that these companies are doing a great job providing solutions to the BoP. But even if 100% of their sales were to be from rural customers with no previous access to electricity this still only solves 16% of the 81 million rural households without electricity in India.

While each of these alternative energy companies are still pretty small and face their own challenges the “Power to the People: Investing in Clean Energy for the Base of the Pyramid in India” report should provide valuable information to both the investors and entrepreneurs trying to meet the needs of India’s rural electrification market.  Hopefully with more reports like these the energy companies can make smarter decisions and investors will feel more confident about the financial and social returns they will achieve from deploying capital in this industry.

Ed. Note: Read more about the report’s launch on the IFMR website, and access the report here.

Energizing entrepreneurs

E+Co’s portfolio proves that there’s no shortage of clean energy ideas or entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

A report stated that willing entrepreneurs represent an abundant but largely untapped resource. It also noted, however, that technical assistance for small business is simply not available in many developing markets.

E+Co unleashes this entrepreneurial potential with a three-part model that combines technical assistance with capital.

• Part 1: It helps entrepreneurs develop solid business plans. Field staff use a toolkit and their understanding of local issues to help would-be entrepreneurs analyze their market and select clean energy products. The business development process is thorough but not over-sophisticated. Similarly, the organization prefers proven solutions to cutting edge technologies.
• Part 2: It lends seed capital, typically $25,000 to $500,000 at average annual interest rates ranging from 8 to 12 percent. Getting to yes requires approval from an independent, unpaid investment committee made up of finance professionals. The experts bring a deep understanding of niche energy markets and small- to medium-sized enterprises.
• Part 3: It provides access to growth capital.

Measuring everything

E+Co relies on concrete metrics to convince diverse investors to fund the organization. A triple bottom line scorecard rolls up data from 30 indicators across three categories: financial, social, and environmental. E+Co admits that it can be swayed by stories of lives improved, but he’s also hard-nosed about numbers, and so looks to the scorecard to see that the portfolio’s average annual return is 8 percent.

Grant funding has become a smaller piece of the pie now that loan repayments generate revenue to reinvest.

E+Co is similarly analytical when it comes to evaluating risk. Although the organization steers clear of untested energy ideas, it sometimes approves demonstration projects that bring proven products to new markets.

Growing the space between

E+Co must now make sure the funds keep flowing. Its loans fall into what its CEO calls the space in between: bigger than microfinance but smaller than corporate-size deals. This “missing middle” is unfamiliar territory for many public and private investors. The main goal is to start a movement, so that small and growing enterprises have ready access to capital. Global acceptance of microfinance has taught E+Co the value of aggregating players to speak with one voice.

Have you had any experience in supporting small businesses in the energy sector? Share your experience with us in the comments section.

However, there are several – mainly local entrepreneurs – that are offering valuable energy solutions to this very segment of people. Most of these enterprises are removed from the traditional energy enterprises, and offer solutions based on local needs, and local possibilities. The Ashoka Network, in collaboration with Hystra, a hybrid organization that works with business and social sector entrepreneurs to design and implement strategies for the BoP, conducted a study on the work of these enterprises.

The study, “Access to Energy for the Base of the Pyramid,” is an in-depth look at several market-based approaches to BoP energy requirements. It looks at the different kind of technology available such as:

• Grid connections: which turns the BoP into legal, paying consumers
• Devices: such as solar lanterns and biomass cook stoves
• Solar home systems: Which deliver electricity to households

It also looks at systemic support to deliver these solutions. These include the roles of co-operatives which take on that challenge of providing sustainable power supply and create income generating opportunities, and the role of finance and various financing intermediaries.  It also makes recommendations for action, outlined for various system enablers – aid agencies, governments, social investors and so on.

The study puts out two interesting observations – that it is not only important to focus on providing solutions that are cost and need-efficient, but also to optimize “human capital.” And secondly, that the most successful social entrepreneurs are also the ones who have tried harder to get the users who were implied in the value-addition process involved.

Download the entire report via the Hystra website.

This article documents all those interesting innovative power generating and modified power-consuming gadgets of everyday use, like motor pumps, flour mills and even electric vegetable shredders that could run on manual or bullock power. He believes that if accent was placed on local power production by the people, not only would the cost per unit of power come down dramatically, but the entire power problem would become non-existent in a few years.

Read the full article here.