Double the value of your solar panels

 

The ideal space for locating solar panels is a small part of a residential colony: the terrace of buildings, which should be out of bounds to residents and free from shadows. Such isolated areas are valuable not only for collecting solar energy but also for collecting rainwater.

How much rain does India get in a year? 1083 mm, according to World Bank data. If you set apart 1 Sq M of collecting area, you can get the volume of water calculated as

Area in Sq M X Rainfall in Meters/year X Efficiency

The efficiency question arises because of evaporation, leakage, etc. Getting an efficiency of 60% seems reasonable. Using the data and the formula given above, we arrive at a figure of

1 X 1.083 X 0.6, or roughly 0.65 Cubic Meters of water. If you set apart 30 Sq M of collection area per resident in an apartment building, you can collect 19.4 Cubic Meters of water per year, approximately 53 Liters/day per resident. It's not luxurious, but we can survive on that.

In a world in which climate change threatens our water resources, we cannot afford to ignore rainfall water collected on building roofs and terraces. Plans for future buildings must provide for collection and filtering. Designing and manufacturing solar panels to enable this will be essential for overall efficiency.

The double-duty solar panels should be able to withstand rain and let it run into the water collection system. They should not contaminate the water. They should also function efficiently as solar energy collectors soon after the rain stops.

Given the importance of solar panels for sustainable living, researchers must focus on cost-effective and reliable ways of turning solar panels to face the Sun. This will be near impossible on sloping tiled roofs but should be possible on the terraces of multi-story apartment blocks. The designs should consider at least the sun's daily movement. However, it is worth noting that the Sun also moves annually. A quarterly manual turning could take care of this.

Srinivasan Ramani

Self-sustaining Wells: Rainwater Conservation

 

 

                                       

A plastic water tank to collect rainwater

   This image was created by Microsoft’s Co-pilot 

Self-sustaining Wells for rural areas

Imagine a shallow well 7 feet deep and about 7 feet in diameter, designed to collect and save rainwater. If there is 100 cm of rain per year, the well could collect 30,000 liters of water, enough for the needs of four adults for six months, at 40 liters per day per person. A small hand pump would be sufficient to pump out 160 liters/day. The well could easily built using pre-fabricated reinforced cement parts.

Rainwater entering a well usually leaks out and adds to the groundwater. In the case of self-sustaining wells, we need to reduce water leaks as much as possible by design. Wellwater evaporates, so SS Wells should be completely covered at the top. 

But how does rainwater get in? We build a small collection tank 13 feet long and 13 feet wide with a tiled surface. This tank needs only to be 6” deep.  It would have to slope so rainwater falling into it will run to a corner. The water will go through a filter and run into the well below.  A float-based water-level indicator would be a valuable addition. 

On days when it does not rain, people who wish to sleep in the open can sleep in the water-collection tank.  

Scaling down the solution

One way is available to provide a fraction of the benefits at a fraction of the investment. Plastic tanks that can hold 1000 liters of water are available in the market in plenty. Imagine if their top cover is replaced by a concave version with a filtering device so rainwater can be collected and stored in the tank. This will provide drinking water for a small family for several months. This solution has the advantage of being very easy to implement.

An App to use when you run into a stupidly designed Website

 

Image from ciphr.com through Wikimedia Commons, CC by 2.0 Licence 

We often encounter poorly managed Websites, and waste hours trying to carry out a simple transaction online. Your blood pressure goes up, you shout at people at home who try to help, and you barely preserve your sanity for the day. I offer an excellent design for an App you can use on these occasions. A possible name for it is Constru, as it has a constructive intent.

The App consists of two parts:

a) Maintains your sanity by letting you curse the manager concerned

b) Helps you publish constructive suggestions.

Maintain your sanity.

People do not realize it, but curses serve a great purpose: maintaining sanity under pressure! However, you cannot publish a curse on a feedback page, email, or whatever. The wonderful law may punish you for doing that.

Don’t worry; our App’s first section allows you to register curses in the privacy of your cell phone in an encrypted form. Curses are stored only on your phone. You can always read back the curses you have registered in your life, giving the date, time, and name of the party concerned. I give two sanitized examples:

11-03-2024 11 AM. Party: --- Retail: You are a bunch of idiots!

12-03-2024 12 noon. Party: --- News portal: Hope you are fired before you get your next salary!  

Of course, the App will register all kinds of curses, including unsanitized ones.

Publish constructive suggestions.

11-03-2024 11 AM. Party: --- Retail: The local phone number given for contacting you does not work. I searched the Web for a contact number for your company. That number rings and rings and does not answer.

12-03-2024 12 noon. Party: --- News Portal: You should not have so many advertisements popping up that the user does not get any news to read in peace.

As the person who will implement the App and run a business based on it, you must make a few decisions:

a)   Should the Website where the constructive suggestions are published indicate that there is a separate, unpublished part where curses have been recorded?

b)   Should the constructive suggestions always indicate the sender’s name? Or should this be done only when the user concerned permits it?

c)   Should you moderate constructive suggestions so that you do not get you into legal issues?

d) Should your users register by providing an email address or a phone number that your system verifies?

Srinivasan Ramani

 

Improving the Design of Ceiling Fans

Ceiling fans seem to attract dust from the air. Even a little trace of oil in the air due to cooking in the kitchen causes the dust on the fans in all rooms to become a thick greasy deposit. The dust deposits seem to form mainly on the upper surfaces, and leading edges of the fan blades. A lot of time gets wasted cleaning fan blades. In addition, cleaning fans is a risky operation as people climb on plastic chairs and flimsy stools. Visit this newspaper report for an example of a death from a fall. 

https://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/woman-falls-to-her-death-while-cleaning-ceiling-fan/58565865.html

We believe that fan makers should do adequate R&D to reduce the need for cleaning ceiling fan blades. Making fan blades very smooth is one way to reduce grime collection. Preventing the build-up of static electrical charges is another. Do fan blades need painting? Perhaps blades made of stainless steel would be worth testing. They should not need painting.

High-end cameras use a technique to get dust off the sensors. When you switch off the camera, the sensor vibrates for a short time to shake off the dust. We should consider using this technique with fans. It is worth trying aerodynamic techniques which will make the fans self-cleaning to some extent.

K Chandrasekar and Srinivasan Ramani
Chandrasekar is a wildlife expert and a wildlife photographer.