Solar power helps India’s rural women

Solar energy push lights up options

KAMLAPUR, Feb 12, (RTRS): In her village of Komalia, the fog swirls so thick at 7:00 am that Akansha Singh can see no more than 15 meters ahead. But the 20-year-old is already cycling to her workplace, nine kilometers away.

Halfway there she stops for two hours at a computer training centre, where she’s learning internet skills. Then she’s off again, and by 10:00 am reaches the small garment manufacturing plant where she stitches women’s clothing for high-end brands on stateof-the-art electric sewing machines.

Solar energy powers most of her day — the computer training centre and the 25-woman garment factory run on solar mini-grid electricity — and clean power has given her personal choice as well, she said.

If the mini-grid system had not been put in place, Singh — a recent college graduate without funds to pursue training as a teacher, the only job open to women in her village — would have had no alternative but to marry, she said.

In fact, “I would already be married off,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Today, however, she earns 4,500 rupees ($70) a month working on solarpowered sewing machines. She uses part of that to pay 300 rupees ($4.70) a month for her computer education class — and is planning to start a computer training centre closer to home.

Like her, most of the women at the factory earn between 2,500 and 4,500 rupees ($39- $70) a month, which has helped their families eat better, get

because of its fine, sugary white sand, lively night scene and abundant water sports.

Consistently voted by travel magazines as one of the top tourist destinations for relaxation, Boracay brings important revenues from five-star resorts and beachside restaurants and remains a lure for South Koreans, Chinese, Americans and Australians.

But Duterte warned that may not be the case for much longer because of what he said children to school and pay for healthcare, they said.

“With a month’s earning alone we can buy new bicycles for ourselves and our school-going children,” Bandana Devi, a mother of four, told the Thomson Reuter Foundation, as she looked up from her sewing.

She bought one for her 12-year-old daughter, she said, and her 6-year-old rides pillion with her to the school, 2 km away.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a $2.5 billion plan to electrify every Indian household by 2019 — a huge task in a country where close to 240 million people still have no access to electrical power.

Energy

Solar power — including the use of small local grids — is likely to be a big part of the push, with 60 percent of new connections expected to be to renewable power, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.

In a clearing in an acacia plantation, the more than 140 solar panels that make up the Kamlapur mini-grid are being cleaned early in the morning.

The 36-kilowatt plant, set up by the for-profit OMC Power Private Ltd (formerly Omnigrid Micropower Company) in 2015, distributes solar energy over 2.4 kms of power lines to 70 households, two telecommunications towers, the clothing manufacturing unit and several other small businesses.

Solar mini-grids usually rely on one or two large users of power — often

were piles of uncollected garbage just 20-25 metres from the beach and sewage flowing into the sea. (RTRS)

Trump’s climate policy hit:

Hollywood star Robert De Niro took aim at the Trump administration’s stance on climate change, telling a packed audience in the Middle East that he was visiting from a “backward” country

Opponents of the former Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL) airport project march during a rally to celebrate the government’s decision to stop the construction of the airport at the ZAD (‘zone a defendre’, zone to defend) in Notre-Dame-desLandes, north of Nantes, western France, on Feb 10. Thousands of opponents of the former Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project are expected to celebrate on Feb 10 the ‘historic victory’ obtained after 50 years of protest and to reaffirm their determination to win a second battle, that of the collective management of

land ‘saved from concrete’. (AFP)

mobile phone towers — to provide a stable base revenue for the system. But as solar electricity becomes available in areas beyond the traditional grid, power-hungry small businesses are emerging that could become anchor users.

Kamlapur’s garment factory, for instance, consumes 10 kilowatts of power each day — the same as the telecom towers, said Ketan Bhatt, an OMC official in Uttar Pradesh state.

The state in 2016 became India’s first to put in place a mini-grid policy, recognising private solar companies as legitimate players in India’s push to get power to all.

Company owners, in turn, say solar mini-grids — which can be more reliable than the unstable grid power their competitors rely on — is giving them a business advantage.

“Because the power supply is steady, we are regularly able to deliver on contract deadlines, which in turn enhances our reputation to bag more contracts,” said Mohammad Riyaz, who set up the Kamlapur garment unit in 2016.

Rohit Chandra, a co-founder of OMC, said he was seeing many solar power users moving beyond simply buying power for home lighting and appliances. Now, he said, they are harnessing solar energy for profit.

“We see barbers installing televisions and fans in their shops to attract more customers. Carpenters buy electric saws and wood polishers, fruit sellers are adding electric juicers. Health centres and dispensaries are coming up in underserved villages too,” Chandra said in a telephone interview.

suffering from “temporary insanity”.

He said that in the country he’s describing, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency suggested last week that global warming may be a good thing for humanity.

“I am talking about my own country, the United States of America. We don’t’ like to say we are a ‘backward’ country so let’s just say we’re suffering from a case of temporary insanity,” he added. (AP)

Skate creates ‘nurseries’:

A ghostly deep-sea skate creates “nurseries” for its mobile phone-sized egg pouches in waters warmed by hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, researchers said Thursday.

Eggs of the Pacific white skate (Bathyraja spinosissima) were found near heat-spewing vents at a depth of between 1,650 and 1,700 metres (5,400-5,600 feet), along the Galapagos Rift off the South American west coast, a team reported.

“This is the first time this egg-incubating behaviour using the heat from active hydrothermal vents is recorded for the marine environment,” study co-author Pelayo Salinas de Leon of the Charles Darwin Research Station in Ecuador told AFP. (AFP)

Suspected poacher eaten by lions:

A suspected poacher was mauled to death and eaten by a pack of lions close to the Kruger National Park in South Africa, police said Monday, adding that little was left of the victim’s body.

The remains were found at the weekend in the bush at a private game park near Hoedspruit in the northern province of Limpopo, where animals have been poached in increasing numbers over recent years. (AFP)