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Mitra Ardron's blog - Natural Innovation


Citizens of the World ? PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Friday, 13 January 2012 00:00

Who would believe its only two weeks since Cyclone Thane took out 70% of the trees, roads, power, water, phone, and Internet and trapped most of us wherever we spent the night for 36 hours.

They must have power on in the village now because I wake up at 5:30 to amplified chanting from the village temple a couple of km away. We still haven't got power back, but at least Steffen (German) borrowed a generator yesterday to pump water, so I can wash clothes as I take a shower.

With the pumping oddities, I don't trust the water yet so breakfast, with my neighbors (Indian / French couple) is porridge & hot tea. First stop of the day is the Town Hall, where Min (indian), a colleague on the wind turbine project works. He's got power and more important Internet, so I can setup logistics for tomorrows meetings in Chennai. The net drops out mid-morning so I head over to the workshop where Jorge (Ecuadorean) is teaching a 5 day seminar on renewable energy to a class including participants from Nepal, Belgiam, India, and Canada.

Lunch, noodles & Indian veg, is with an Indian solar engineer, comparing notes on inverter models and prices, and I meet afterwards with an Austrian sustainability consultant to compare notes on costs and yield of urban agriculture between Oakland & Indian cities.

The net still isn't back up, so I head to the next village, to buy petrol for the clunky motorbike I've been renting, and to beg time in a Spanish friend's office where they design solar street lights. He's got both a generator and his net is working :-)

Pick up a couple of returning school-kid hitchhikers (Tamil), and dodge the rest of them, hay wagons, buses, trucks and cows for my next meeting in the industrial zone with a French sanitation expert to discuss UV Aquastar's war treatment device, and his use of Effective Micro organisms.

Work is over for the day and I head to a concert by a French flutist. Before dinner of south Indian dosa and pumpkin soup with an English teacher of collaborative games. We both head to an improv theatre show by the kids with unsurprisingly a cyclone theme. After the show, I sit with friends, (A Faroe Islander & her Egyptian partner & their baby; French & Danish) to listen to music by a Portuguese Didge player, and others I don't know on bamboo & steel flutes, and space-drum.

So what are we … are we the nationalities of our birth, or citizens of an ever more inter-connected world, enjoying sharing the differences of our upbringing.

Enough for today, I've got to be up early for a 4 hour taxi ride to Chennai. So I fall asleep to the sound of next door's generator accompanied by frogs, and crickets.

 

 

 

 
Auroville devasted by cyclone PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Monday, 02 January 2012 23:48

Just a short post ... to say that I'm in Auroville, in Southern India. I arrived a few hours before Cyclone Thane, which took out 70% of the trees, there was one down every 10 meters on the road, and that took out power; water; internet; phone (fixed & mobile). Many farms lost their crops, and the project we are supporting here - low cost wind turbines for rural poor - lost its workshop and one turbine when a tree came through it.

If you feel to help ... please donate here, on  and put "MinVayu" or "Wind" in the comments, I'll pass that on to help them rebuild.

There is more about the damage to Auroville here.

I have limited internet acces / laptop charge, so may be slow responding to email.

 
National or International identity PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Saturday, 20 August 2011 21:19

Last night I went to a party in Auroville, southern india. Outdoors - lit by christmas lights strung between trees, with a dirt floor and cast concrete tables with inlaid mosaic.

My neighbours over the Middle Eastern dinner were a couple of Australians and she was studying how people relate, or don't, to their national identity. She talked about a couple she'd met, she French/German born in India; he Mexican/Canadian; their kids in theory could have five passports at birth. (Two more than me).

So I looked around - I was sitting with an Ecuadorian; German; South African & Faroe Islander (part of Denmark). The musicians were a Portuguese couple playing West African Kora and Imbira (harp and thumb piano);

About half the party were Indian - mostly Tamils - Indian nationality itself is complex; people identify with the state their family is from. So many are quadri-lingal (the state of their family; their residence; English & Hindi).

Among the other people I knew well at the party were 4 African nationalities; 6 European & 1 South American. I'm sure I could have counted many more if I'd known the nationality of  more of the people there, but then I wonder how much each of these people identifies with their country of birth?

We danced on a dirt floor; listening the approaching thunder and lightning of a monsoon storm. Just as I was thinking that I couldn't be further from home, the DJ put on Wild Marmalade, a high energy didgeridoo band from back home in Byron Bay, I know the musicians, have danced to them at many small gigs in village halls. Yes - I identified through them with Byron; identified to a sense of place; to people I know - though not to its location as part of Australia.

I don't know where the DJ got their music, but he obviously liked the band, and played several tracks, so by the time its first few drops arrived we were so hot from dancing we didn't care.

 

 

 

 

 
A future powered by 100% renewables PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Thursday, 19 May 2011 16:03

There was a question on Quora recently "Can anyone imagine a future powered by 100% renewable energy".

It has been interesting to me that parallel efforts are showing that this is very much possible: There are papers in the UK and Australia on exactly this topic - looking at the cost and feasibility.

In the US there is also a really good report www.gigatonthrowdown.org which looks at how ten sectors could achieve 1 GTonne emission cut each - which is almost the same answer.

In fact by some analysis would be cheaper (even without the cost of dealing with climate change) than coal, natural gas and of course cheaper than nuclear.

Of course - we still need to make this work in developing countries - which is what Natural Innovation is all about.

 

 

 

 

 
March 2011 equinox newsletter PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Monday, 04 April 2011 00:00

mar 2011 equinox newsletter

I've just sent out my second newsletter, and you can read it here, and you can subscribe here to get future issues.

 
Villgro - pre incubation program PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Monday, 07 March 2011 02:30

I spent an interesting day with the new "Pre Incubation Program". A mentoring program put together by Villgro in Chennai to effectively leverage the help of experienced mentors to entrepreneurs, through the help of recent MBA graduates.

Read more...
 
Australian Solar industry celebrates grid parity PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Wednesday, 02 November 2011 19:12
Solar industry celebrates grid parity ... via ABC

The [Australian] Photovoltaic Association says the drop in cost of producing power from solar 
panels has made solar power competitive with coal-generated grid power.

Solar power generated by photovoltaic cells on Australian rooftops has become so cheap 
and efficient that they now produce electricity for the same price that is charged by the 
electricity grid.
Read more...
 
A typical day in Auroville PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Wednesday, 03 August 2011 11:34

Its my second day in Auroville, jet-lag has kicked in, and I wake at 4am, tired but not able to sleep. I read for a while and around 4:30 the first birds start calling, followed by the frogs and crickets. Finally I give in to the inevitable, and grab a shower  - its cold, and just dribbles out the shower-head, but I'm not complaining.  A short walk across the farmyard, past the cows rattling their buckets to my rented electric scooter - which I've left charging in the barn, and then a drive through the forest to the bakery in the village.   The chocolate croissants look like they have been made for westerners, but at this time of the morning its only indians buying.

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Schools of Appropriate technology PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Monday, 18 April 2011 17:09

Over a long breakfast with Chris Watkins of Appropedia recently, I realised that there are several distinct schools of Clean/Appropriate technology where different sets of assumptions drive optimisation for different outcomes. I found it helpful to think these through in the table below. I believe that if we understand the different ways of thinking then it helps to look at how to build on each other's work without expecting that "improvements" we need will necessarily translate back to a different set of assumptions.

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Potassium Iodide for Japan PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Wednesday, 16 March 2011 21:33

I just landed back in Australia, and Marshal Rubinstein, co-founder with me of the OneFridge project is getting Potassium Iodide tablets made and shipped to Japan as it is supposedly the best protection against radiation danger. We have heard they are very hard to get (even in the San Francisco bay area) at the moment, and the ones available are being sold at high prices by profiteers.

There are a number of challenges we are working on - both here and in Japan, and help would be useful with a couple of the points in our brief below relating to Import regulations and Distribution.

We could also potentially use a manufacturer in Japan and ship all the 150kg or what is left of it.

Below is a fact sheet - I'm updating this as things change - as often as hourly as its a rapidly moving project.

 

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Sunvention in the running for Buckminster Fuller Challenge PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mitra Ardron   
Saturday, 12 February 2011 18:31

I'm proud that Sunvention has made it into the list of contenders for this year's Buckminster Fuller Challenge. This challenge, based on the concepts of Bucky Fuller, is looking for out-of-the box and practical solutions to today's practical problems.

Some extracts and images from a much longer entry (that I co-authored) have been posted by the Buckminster Fuller Institute online on challenge.bfi.org

It would of course be great to get comments on the site.

 

 

 
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