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| SCIENCE TRIBUNE | Thursday, January 23, 2003, Chandigarh, India |
Time to tap micro hydel potential Network storage Robot which
can shadow-box |
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Time to tap micro hydel potential TODAY, electricity has become an essential ingredient of human life. Unfortunately, it cannot be donated or stored like blood by creating "power banks". It has to be simply generated and used. For a country, its per capita power generation or consumption has become a prime indicator of its economic growth and self-reliance. As the universe gets increasingly electrified, necessity of harnessing every major as well as minor resource has become extremely important — rather essential. We are always on the lookout for major resources to tap energy. In our effort to strike goldmines of power, we have been forgetting the smaller sources. Another reason for this has been non-development of cost effective technology. Now the scene has undergone a change and needs a fresh view and analysis. In China, every small fall available in the canals is being utilised to generate power. Turbines being developed there are such that can be carried in a carrier tied to your vehicle. China is fast approaching the situation when every house located on the bank of a river shall install its own small turbine in the river and produce energy enough for a single house. It is time India paid full attention to the micro hydel potential it has and tapped it alongwith its plans to set up big power projects. Hilly areas of Himalayan region have a number of perennial streams having little discharges that can be harnessed for small power generation. In the plains, the canals have many small drops available. Though the drops are small but discharges available are significant. A number of small falls are available in these canal branches. At many sites, the fall is small while the discharge is large and at some sites, significant fall is available. The falls available vary from 0.5 metre to 3.5 metres while the discharge varies from as little as 186 cusecs to as large as 12983 cusecs. There are possibilities of integrating little falls and then utilise them for power production. Sometimes situations arise when benefits can be reaped of the new scenario arising after setting up of certain projects. One such possibility has arisen in Ropar. The escape cum hydel channel of Ropar Thermal Plant, that takes out the circulating water of the plant to Sutlej, has a fall of 9.57 metres available. This fall can be well utilised to generate about 17000 KW of power which means about 35000 units per day. Another big opportunity has arisen at Mukerian, where about 18 MW of power can be generated utilising the fall available in the proposed Mukerian Hydel channel Stage-II leading to the River Beas.
Table 2 shows the present status of various projects. Twelve projects having a generation capacity of 14.4 MW have been completed till date. Three projects on Kotla branch are almost complete. These together will provide about 5.2 MW more. The PSEB has actively taken up both its projects at Ropar and Mukerian and construction work on these projects is expected to commence soon. PEDA has recently launched a sort of compaign to allot all its projects on each canal branch to a single private party and to get the work done through the private companies. Detailed project reports (DPRs) of many of these projects with PEDA are either approved or under approval. The BBMB has taken up preparatory work to start work on three projects having comparatively larger capacities. These three projects located on the BML will provide 20MW additional capacity. The BML has the advantage of having little or no silt because the channel is fully lined. Thus the projects on the BML can be brought up easily and run without problems while for other projects to be set up on other branches, measures to prevent clogging of machinery by the silt will need to be taken.
There were times when the cost of setting of micro hydel projects proved to be a deterrent in taking them up. The cost used to be compared with the per- MW cost of large hydro projects. Such comparison was not justified as a smaller project would definitely cost more. What needed to be seen was the perpetual generation that these projects would have provided. However, now the scene has undergone a big change. The generating equipment now being produced is cost effective and can be selected with respect to the type of flow. Different equipment can be chosen for constant and variable discharges, little or more head and with respect to the space available across or along the flow of water. The energy generated by a micro hydel project can be consumed near the project itself thus saving expenditure on transmission and distribution lines. Isolated pockets of villages where the transmission system may not easily reach, specially in case of Himachal Pradesh, can be lighted up through micro hydel projects. Otherwise these projects can be connected to the available grid at appropriate voltage. Their gestation periods are also very
small and the decades-long wait involved in the commissioning of a
large hydroelectric power project is also not there. |
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Network storage NETWORK storage of the pivotal parameters affecting the success of information technology tools implementation. The availability of timely and accurate information gives the competitive edge to the business process. This in turn is attributed to the efficient handling of volumes of data. The storage of data has to be handled in a processional way. With increasing data, the requirement for bandwidth intensive backup and fast recovery mechanism has become point worth exploring. In its most basic sense, network storage is defined as a methodology storing data, which can be accessed by clients on the network. The accurate data must be available to the user at all time. irrespective of global distances. Network storage can be realised by any one of the methodology addressed in the following section. Direct Attached Storage (DAS) This term is associated with a storage device that is directly connected to the host system. Hard disk drive of the server is the best example in the support of DAS. The operating system helps in storing and retrieving the data from the storage device hooked up to the host computer. Small computers system interface (SCSI) is the protocol used here. As the requirements for reliability availability and quality rose the "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks" (RAID) technology surfaced. This paved the way for the users to access the disk array as if it were a single storage disk. Network Attached Storage (NAS): By the mid 90s it became essential for data to be accessible over networks. This laid the foundation for the concept of NAS which is a storage mechanism having devices attached directly to the network. The devices have their specific IP addresses and can be accessed by the clients through a server. The NAS architecture enables servers to run on different operating systems and share centralised storage devices. Security aspect can also be centralised. Here, the backup and restore mechanism can be done from a remote site. The major benefit of NAS lies in its ease in expandability and fault tolerance. Storage Area Network (SAN): This technology was introduced to cater to ever increasing volumes of data and enhanced bandwidth requirements. SAN consists of a network of storage devices attached to each other and to the server, which acts as a nodal point to the SAN. Sometimes a SAN is also connected to the network switches. SAN makes use of FC (Fiber Channel) to transit and receive data at upto 10 Gbps. Fibre Channel also allows the devices to be connected over a larger distance. A recent survey conducted worldwide depicts that SAN will account for 71% of network storage by 2004. There are other technologies like
ISCSI, which are on the way to boost the domain of network
storage. This methodology allows the data to be transferred from the
storage devices over the IP network. The process serialises the data
from a SCSI connection. The usage of ISCSI makes the domain of network
storage as global. The day is not far when the concept of
"storage service Providers" SSPs emerges on the scene. This
will pave the way for diskless PCs with the storage needs being taken
care by SSPs. |
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Robot which can shadow-box CHINESE scientists have successfully developed a 1.58-metre and 76-kg robot which can perform "Taiji," traditional Chinese shadow boxing. The robot named "BHR-1" passed appraisal as a major project for Beijing University of Science and Engineering under China’s high and new technology research and development programme. "BHR-1" had 32 joints from head to foot which made it move properly, Chief scientist in-charge of the project, professor Li Kejie said. It can walk with 0.33 metre steps at a speed of 1 km per hour, he said adding the robot was able to walk and play Taiji without a power cable incorporating its own power source. The robot can also sense changing ground levels and balance itself, he said. A robot like this would be able to take over
some dangerous jobs from humans, he added. PTI |
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UNDERSTANDING THE UNIVERSE When objects having different weights fall from the same height why do they produce different volumes of sound on impact with the ground. Also, how does the kinetic energy of the object change into sound energy?
Making a dent or a hole in the ground
also requires energy. Changing of kinetic energy into sound energy
happens when it leads to any vibrations whose frequency lies in the
audible region of our ears. This happens in most musical instruments,
in the ringing of bells and even while speaking and singing. For the
last two our breath in passing through our larynx and the oral cavity
produces the vibrations. |
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CROSSWORD Clues Across : 1. Copper pipe through which air is blown into blast furnace. 5. Unit of fluidity equal to reciprocal of Poise. 8. A mineral containing a metal or nonmetal. 9. A machine for drying. 11. Washing out a soluble material from an insoluble solid by using a solvent. 13. Symbol for National Highway. 14. Relating to earth. 16. Abbr. for a Pulse research directorate established by ICAR. 19. An explosive considered very powerful and used to make shells and bombs. 20. Bright flowered ornamental leaved plant. 24. Short for food energy measurement unit. 25. Layer of cartilage between vertebrae. 26. Small block or peg of wood. 27. A system of electromagnetic units. 28. An inert gas used in electric tubes. 29. Unit of mass in CGS system. Down : 1. Diphenyl acetylene. 2. Duct by which urine passes from bladder. 3. Measure of time taken by Earth to complete its orbit around the Sun. 4. This accumulator consists of Nickel and Iron. 5. A body in which distance among particles remains constant under action of forces. 6. Symbol for Helium. 7. Quantum of energy of an oscillator. 10. Popular term for Ribonucleic acid. 12. A set of projections on edge of wheel or bar transferring motion. 15. An interferometer used to study fine spectrum lines. 17. The region in a discharge of gases in which the no. of +ve and -ve ions is nearly equal. 18. Abbr. for a multi-national corporation. 20. A metal oxide formed by heating an ore in air. 21. Prefix denoting one thousand millionth. 22. Row or unit of a structure. 23. Dirt or waste seen floating on surface of liquid. (Clues that appeared last week were
erroneous. The Crossword is being reproduced with correct clues. The
error is regretted.) |
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Table
1 shows the canal and branch wise number of projects and the power
potential available in Punjab. It can be seen that the little power
potentials of different sites, if harnessed, can combine together to
provide 154 MW of power. It can be a big help to ease the power
position in Punjab. Most of these projects are to be taken up by the
Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA) and the BBMB while the Ropar
and Mukerian projects are to be handled by the PSEB.
I could answer this
question very simply. If I were to take an object that is 10 kg in
weight and divide it into ten pieces of one kilogram each, then each
of these pieces has a right to make as much sound on striking the
earth as any other. So the volume of the sound made by the impact of
the 10 kg object has to be greater. The energy and the momentum
acquired by the 10 kg object is 10 times greater than that of the
one-kilogram object falling from the same height. The collision with
the ground breaks up the object and things it falls on. The kinetic
energy of the falling object is expended in this breakup, which
produces heat by friction in addition to vibrations while tearing up
material. Air pockets expand explosively. This in addition to
vibrations of the breakup produces sound waves. The kinetic energy is
converted into heat and sound, besides being used to overcome the
cohesive forces of the material that is demolished.