Mitra Ardron's Blog

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.