Here's feedback/opinions/ideas with regard to the previous post. A big thanks to SG, Hari Om,Hari Sundararajan, Bhargav Ranganath, Sridevi, Kruthi and Varun Agrawal for taking time out and putting down your thoughts here. Highly appreciate it!
SG:
The first problem that I see with this solution is scalability. Given that Bangalore is the third most populous city, by the time people fill out the forms (which they take forever) and these are ingested and sorted out, the power consumption issue may actually be obsolete. Let us assume that this is planned in advance. The second issue I see with this is prioritization. Given that there are businesses (some probably with the promise of uninterrupted power supply), schools, hospitals and residential areas in the same place (and possibly connected to one or more common grids). Assuming that this is sorted out (using some parallel circuits), the third issue is people agreeing on a common slot. Even if the Govt. offers you only 3 choices, I am sure the distribution will be almost equal that the slot chosen will leave the remaining 66.6% unsatisfied. I am not trying to beat your suggestion down but I very much fear that implementing such a convenient solution will lead us all to not take the energy conservation issue seriously. I would think coming up with 'greener' solutions (like the Google power meter that speaks in a language people understand - money) could be the best approach, given that developed countries are already breathing down our necks (without any concern as to what they have been doing all these days !)...oh..dear, I should probably made this a post instead of a comment !
clarification: I misunderstood a part of your post, I was assuming that the Govt. will turn off a grid and I think that a couple of houses turning off the power (while the rest do not) will not help as much since they should power the plant/transformer supplying those grids in any case. But I do like the idea of a 'device' that monitors power supply - exactly the idea behind google power meter.
Hari Om:
In gujarat the power is controlled by "Torrent power" a private player.
He promises more than 99% of uptime and actually he delivers it.
Now the good thing is no power cut and the baad thing is less business for inverters and DG sets.This reminds me one more thing, people who need power doesn't care how they get it. for example if there is a power cut the "garuda" mall wont be shut down. it will glow using a powerful Generator suited on its roof or underground. a local store will run on inverter.we people are habitual of being at ease and we will pay for it.one more thing, producing electricity locally by DG sets and etc is cheaper than buying it from government under industrial tariff.
Anyway whenever we (The people) thinks and decide something we always CAN...
now-a-days we just need a "jagoo-re" campaign for enlightenment...
Hari Sundararajan:
The first question is, why is the power cut happening?
If my guess is correct in that the power cuts are happening to save power/ reduce power usage, your "I go out from 3pm to 6pm and will cut power for that time" kind of totally defeats the purpose. Your lights are anyway going to be off etc etc, and the current company isn't really saving a lot. However, if they take off power during the times the usage is at its peak, they tend to save more.
It's like saying "I don't like watching advertisements, so I will have the advertisements on TV play from 1 in the night to 8 in the morning when I am not watching TV, and then the rest of the day I can watch commercial-free content" ..
Speaking of paying off the fine, the only way I can think of is increasing the fine exponentially. In other words, you come within one hour after the curfew hour, you pay 50 but you come within two hours, you pay more and then even more, and so on with the electricity situation as well.
If, on the other hand, you want to take it one step further, you could establish incentives. For every 1 week you return to the hostel on time, you could spend the next 3 days out late. Or, ensure your power consumption is within so many watts, and you have got yourself some free electricity now.
Bhargav Ranganath:
The idea is good. However, the issue is how much power is saved when you are out and not using it compared to when you badly needed it. May be I should give it more though if the power cuts are serving the purpose when it comes to residential services. If the power cuts are scheduled ones, people will definitely work around them and the peak consumption shifts to a different time. Whereas, power cuts make sense with small businesses as they can't really work around the scheduled cuts, and end up using generators.
Also, to the point that operating diesel generators (assuming DG stands for diesel generators) being cheaper - diesel fuel is subsidised by the Government. Its worth to take that into consideration too.
Sridevi:
Nice idea, but both SG and Hari have a point too.
Anyway, something I observed at NITJ. The new warden made a rule that those girls that came into the hostel after curfew had to pay 50 bucks fine. So what many girls did was pay the fine daily and hang out with their boyfriends till late night. Same way, if the turning of power was in our hands, many would prefer to leave it on and pay the fine later, just because they can afford to do so.
But yeah, you could look on the bright side, the power cut is only 3 hours. In the Ungra village (when I was living at ASTRA centre of IISc), we had power supply only from 7pm till 2-3am in the morning, and even lesser sometimes!
Kruthi P:
I think that's a good idea, if used rightfully and honestly. The problem here is the "Attitude" of people. You should make sure that everyone does right. If one person fails to do it, there is a high chance of his/her neighbour to follow the footsteps and have lesser time of power cuts. People are used to work around the law here, and the fines are sometimes not fair to either sides.
The other point would be peak hours of power consumption. There are times of the day noted to be the peak times of consumption of power. You will have to work out some balance for that too.
Varun Agrawal: That is not the idea. If you do this the way you said that you will know that i timings for which you are ready to let go your power will coincide with a lot of people. It will be very immature to think power supply as a cookie box where you have your share. Its done more on prioritizing, by that i mean in the peak hours electricity department has to prioritize on where to send the power and not on how to distribute it to some guy at some time. Also power distribution happens through grids. Which are area dependent and not user dependent. So your alone cutting power will not make sense unless everybody else do that and grid can direct the supply to the other node ..
No comments:
Post a Comment