Building the Green Way ..

While going thru material for the subject of sustainability I chanced upton the article Building the Green way (click here) by Charles Lockwood and published in Harvard Business Review of June 2006.

The author has given ten interesting points to discuss  on the plan to construct green buildings.

1. Focus on the big picture

2. Choose sustainable site

3. Do the math

4. Make the site plan work for you

5. Landscape for savings

6. Design for greater green

7. Take advantage of technology

8. Save and manage water

9. Use alternate materials

10. Construct green

Al the points are self explanatory. But the most important and interesting point for me is how technology can be leveraged for making buildings green.  

In the ten points one notable omission is that of energy. Generating our own energy by either using solar or wind is a good idea to take care of the energy needs inside green buildings. If we are going for solar energy, we need to have batteries that can store this energy for night use or an arrangement to give power to the grid during daytime and receive from the grid during night time. 

Managing local rainwater harvesting zones is all the more important these days as it is widely believed that the third world war will be fought over water. The threat of hydro-political interaction can happen at five places around the world, the Nile, Ganges-Bhramaputra, Indus, Euphrates-Tigris and the Colorado rivers (click here for WEF doc). If we take care of the water resources now itself, I am sure that conflict can be avoided.

George..

Technical visit to Anekal railway station ..

With Prof. Sajan Mathew, we went to Anekal railway station to find out about the dynamics of train travel, how effective and efficient are the processes, mainly the signalling, ticketing, safety, maintenance and operations at the railway station.

We were interested in understanding how trains run safely and effectively on the Hosur Bangalore route. We went at 1 pm to interact with the railway authorities and explore the opportunities for digital transformation mini projects by MBA students, to begin with.Scheduling, safety and operational maintenance are interesting areas where there are possibilities for cooperation and collaboration.

The communications link, power supply and backup power were operated and maintained at the highest levels by the dedicated team of the station manager and the 9-10 crew there. By ensuring that the station manager and crew work only for 48 hours in a 168 hour week and having a team of three to four members each, the team can man the station 24×7.

Safety is no doubt the greatest responsibility of the team at the railway station. By having a hybrid system that utilizes technology under supervised manual control, the railways can ensure accident free rides to the public.

We intend to interact with Railways authorities in the future to explore avenues of collaboration between Railways and Alliance University.

George (Grammarly 96%)

Are Afghan refugees the world's problem ?

Taliban's impending runover of Afghan democratic forces and take over is an interesting event the world is watching inquisitively. Being a set of a misguided group from the times of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, supported by the US, the Taliban starting the fear psychosis in the Afghan people and starting the new wave of refugees is a concern to the world.

  

Is Afghanistan worried at all? Why is it that the wave of migrants first started from Syria, then Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia, now Afghanistan? What are the grand plans behind these vast waves of refugees waiting to enter other countries? Who is fanning the uprooting of people from these counties, who is causing unrest in these countries and finally who is seeing a flow of the refugees from these countries to the west?

 

The word refugee has the following meaning - the person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster - Google

 

Cambridge Dictionary gives this definition - a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of war:

Are these refugees, after they enter into foreign lands, able to homogenise, amalgamate and merge with their new adopted culture and forget their ethnic differences? Sadly we find that is not the case for these particular cases of refugees. The refugees, even in distant countries stick to their extreme fanatic beliefs and dogma which drove them out from their own countries. 

 

Any fair thinking person of the world would want to see through this game plan of these countries in sending their people to the more prosperous western countries and in precipitating crises there in due course of time.

 

Emmanuel Macron, the French President warned the European countries of this threat from the poor countries of Syria, Afghanistan. 

 

Global leaders need to look back at the crisis hitting the world. These refugees from Syria and other Arab countries after coming to France have not integrated with the local population but is trying to make the divisions in society more stark, with their intention to divide French society right through the middle. Is this the right thing to do?

 

The creation of refugees in these poor countries may not be an intentional action, but any normal thinking person in the world is seeing a big game plan in these refugee flows across countries not mixing with the local adopted country population instead of disturbing the peace in their newly accepted lands. 

 

My statement (as well as that of French President Emmanuel Macron) is very clear - Refugees need to mingle and integrate with the adopting population and not try to disrupt it.

 

George.

Visit to Tata Solar farm Pavaguda

On the 21st of August 2021, early morning 5 AM with a batch of 24 students and 2 drivers, we were off to Pavaguda Tumkur, Karnataka for a visit to the 400 MW Tata solar farm. 

Karnataka Renewable power development corporation has a 2050 MW solar power generation capacity at Pavaguda. Total Solar operated 500 MW of the 2050 MW but has outsourced 2 nos. 50 MW plants to third parties. Thanks to the CAN dept, Surekha madam and Gopal, the industry visit was managed at very short notice.

Pavagada solar park, also known as Shakti Sthala, is a 2GW solar complex developed in Pavagada, Tumkur district, approximately 180km from Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The developers increased the capacity by 50MW.

The project was developed by Karnataka Solar Power Development Corporation Limited (KSPDCL), a joint venture between Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) and Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited (KREDL), with an estimated investment of Rs16.5bn ($2.5bn) - www.power-technology.com

The coordination from the students' side was done very efficiently by Surya Dhar from Sem 3 Operations and Paramveer Singh from sem 2. With Covid protocols, injections, shoes covering feet, drinking water, some snacks on the way, we were off.

 

A Clarification of MW and MWh - A megawatt (MW) is a unit of electric capacity or electric load. A MW is equal to 1,000 kilowatts (kW). ... A MWh is 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). 

An MWh is the amount of electricity generated by one megawatt (MW) electric generator operating or producing electricity for one hour. www.nj.gov 

53 sqkm of solar panels was what we were promised at Pavaguda and it was very true. After reaching the plant at sharp 10 AM and security procedures etc, we were divided into 2 groups of 13 and 12, the Tata staff explained the features of the total Pavaguda complex covering 13,600 acres of arid land. (Click here for the link to a case study).

Usually, field visits involve sound, noise, big machinery, huge buildings, a lot of employees, cars trucks etc... As different from common physical perception, here is something different - silent, no noise, no heavy movement of trucks etc. Even though we were between the long rows of Chinese make solar panels, as it was slightly cloudy, we spent almost 2 hours outside listening to Mr Reddy, the operations chief and the extremely friendly Tata Solar technical staff explaining the finer details to us. (Pic shows the Alliance School of Business Bangalore students and faculty members with Tata Solar staff at Pavaguda).

Each section generates 12.5 MW and 4 such sections comprise a block of 50 MW. There are a total of 10 blocks. Each panel of 330 W capacity is joined in series which is then joined together at the junction box near the panels, the DC is collected and sent to the Inverters through underground cables that convert the DC to AC. Each block has a capacity of 50 MW. The AC is stepped up to 440 kV and sent to the Karnataka Power Corporation grid. Other players at the Pavaguda area may have a different way to collect, integrate, convert and step up the power.

For 20 Aug, in Block 18, there were 16 inverters in service with 2,28,510 modules in service. 

 

Inverter Generation - 324.723 MWh

Gross Generation - 323.488 MWh

Net Generation - 320.688 MWh

highest Generation - 425.856 MWh

 

Performance ratio (PR) is stated as per cent and describes the relationship between the actual and theoretical energy outputs of the PV plant, 84.58%

Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) is the total solar radiation incident on a horizontal surface, 5.06 KWh/sqm

Global Tilted Irradiance (GTI) represents irradiation that falls on a tilted surface, 5.1 KWh/sqm

On discussions with the Tata officials, we came to know that safety is paramount in the plant. They have not lost even a single day due to an accident, except for one accident that happened to an outsourced agency. This high track record of safety is a highly-priced treasure for the plant.

 

The daily solar irradiance at the plant is accurately measured with advanced instrumentation besides the wind velocity through a wind gauge and rainfall through a rain gauge. Being at approximately 14 deg N latitude, Pavaguda receives better solar irradiance than Kochi or the equator. Badlam in Rajasthan India having the world's largest solar farm, 2250 MW, is near the Tropic of Cancer and the solar irradiance in summer can go up to 6.5 KWh/sqm daily. Yesterday, being cloudy, the solar radiance was at a low of about 3-4 KWh/sqm.

2050 MW solar power as the output from Pavaguda has zero Carbon footprint, green energy. Bangalore city has a daily demand of 2000 MW and Karnataka 6000 MW. Humanity is dependent on electric power, our dependence is only going to increase with each passing day. Understanding and managing the generation and distribution of this green power is of great importance to modern-day managers, to stand out among the crowd.

 

The cleaning of the panels is very important as dust on the panels can reduce the panel generation efficiency and power generated. Water is used on some of the panels, as this offers extra employment to the locals whose land has been used for the plant, taken on lease starting at Rs 21,000 per carte with 5% appreciation every 2 years. This works perfectly fine for the farmers, but the company feels this may not be plausible in the long run, given the crashing tariffs for solar power touching Rs 1.99/ KWh (unit) globally. The water on the ground leads to wild grass growth needing frequent pruning. Some blocks use mechanical brushes to clean the panel.

 

Artificial Intelligence, Automation etc. may help improve efficiency and lower costs but negatively impacts local employment. Considering the downward pressure on the price of power, this is inevitable. As Peter Diamandis in his books "Abundance" and "The Future is faster than you think" mentions, there will be an abundance of power coming out of human ingenuity and innovative mind and this is going to hit us very soon, maybe in the next thirty years. 

Pavaguda was chosen for this plant as it was an arid land with low rainfall. But over the past two years, the rainfall pattern has changed for the better. We could see little wild grass on the ground around the panels and the plant authorities were finding it difficult to trim this. We do not know whether our suggestion of growing creeper vegetables, as is being done in the 50 MW Kochi airport would be taken up by the authorities. This suggestion is not that innovative too.

We finished our visit by 1.30 pm and were on our way back home after a good lunch in Pavaguda town by 3.30 pm reaching Bangalore by 8 PM.

Great learning of a very important factor of the future of human beings on planet earth, green energy. Being very technical and located in faraway places, most educational institutions skip such visits. Understanding the gravity of the situation, there could not be a more important plant to visit, given that Pavaguda solar farm is the third-largest in the world.  

George

 

 

How to implment new technologies in the organisation ..

More often than not we find people reeling out excuses when we have to implement new technologies on the shop floor or in processes. The HBR paper by Christian Stadler et al, Aug 21, titled 3 strategies for rolling out new technologies in your company has listed three simple yet effective strategies to help bring new technology. 

 

In research spanning ten years covering 7000 drilling projects, they found only companies that showed interest in getting new technologies finally succeeded and got to reduce their operational costs by almost 15% and remained profitable. 

 

In any organisation find the user community to start the technology on.

 

we would always find some user evangelists for new technology who would be more than eager to implement the new tech. Grab them and motivate them

 

Provide grants, joint funds, joint implementation, financial help to the implementer, let them implement and show the rest how does it look finally.

 

By giving this support and hand holding, we find more often than not, all new technologies can be implemented smoothly in the shop floor.

 

George..

Interesting Circular economy strategies ..

It was exciting to read of three common strategies for a Circular economy through an HBR article namely, in the aim to transition to a zero-waste economy. The three strategies are being deployed across the world. They are

1. Retain Product Ownership 
2. Product Life Extension
3. Design for Recycling

Most of the time we tend to throw away used items when the items are with us and after use, it has to be disposed of. To avoid facing a high disposal cost, we dispose of them in the nearest available public disposal system. Now it is public property and more often than not it gets mismanaged and mishandled, often getting spilt and litter getting spread. The above three strategies have been proposed by Atalay Atasu, Céline Dumas, Luk N. Van Wassenhove in their HBR article The Circular Business Model of July 2021. (click here).

 

Retain Product Ownership: Product manufacturers when they sell their product do not sell the product altogether, they give the user only the right to use the product. This often becomes manageable for the customer than owning the product. The product ownership is retained by the manufacturer and the user is only given the right to use it. The product disposal now becomes the lookout of the large manufacturer than the small customer.

 

Product Life Extension: Products usually are disposed of when the useful life gets over. Imagine we can extend this life by some basic maintenance or add ons. For example, the tyre once gets used are usually thrown away to the garbage sites. Imagine these tyres getting a lease of life after retreading.

 

Design for Recycling: If we design the product in such a way that after its useful life, the product components can be reused in other parts and components so that the individual parts can be recycled, we find that lot of wasteful products can be recycled. In environmentally sensitive families we find, the elder child dresses are used by the next child so on, till they get worn out. 

The author is proposing an addition to these 3 principles - Changing Operating System principles, which comes under product life extension.

 In the IT industry, a strategy often used is of changing the Operating system principles. Laptops that work on Windows are kept aside when newer microprocessor chips or Windows versions get released. Linux users take these older machines and load them with the different Linux OSes available which is very efficient on such old architecture. Even though this can be classified as under Product Life extension, the basic principles involved are change of Operating system. This requires new skills of the new OS to be mastered by the user.

Almost all circular economy initiatives can be classified under these 4 initiatives and can be a strong guiding factor for organisations to decide to rate their circularity coefficient. 

 

If only 2 of the 4 strategies are being adopted by the organisation, the circularity coefficient is 50%, while for an organisation deploying 3 of these 4 strategies, the circularity coefficient is almost 75%. This is on the premise that the higher the use of these five initiatives, the higher is the circularity element in the business operations. Alternatively, organisations deploying all four of these circular strategies is a 4 star CE company while one that deploys 2 of these 4 strategies is a 2 star CE company.

2 aspects are important while considering the circular economy, how easy it is to access the product (or get it back) and how easy it is to recover value from the product (the processing). Accordingly, these two aspects are plotted as two axes of the circularity matrix (shown on the right) Image courtesy HBR. The Y-axis representing how easy it is to access the product and the X-axis representing how easy it is to recover value from the product. 

 

Depending on the ease of access and ease of processing to regain value, the area is divided into four quadrants,

• The top right quadrant are items that are hard to get and at the same time hard to reprocess to get value, eg. tyres and wind turbine blades 
• The top left quadrant is for products that are tough to get while easy to process to get value, like biodegradable packaging, cardboard boxes etc. 
• The bottom left quadrant is for products that are easy to access or get and at the same time easy to process, clothing at homes is used for wiping dishes, swabbing the floor etc.
• The bottom right quadrant is for items that are easy to get but hard to process, like old shoes, mobile phones etc.
  

The Circularity matrix is an important tool to understand whether any product can be processed through the circular economy fast or not. 

 

George. (Picture courtesy HBR, July '21).

Why is AI still in the data-rich industry domain .... ?

How long it will take for effective AI deployment across range of industries both massive data-rich and data-scarce ?

We see that AI in the present day revolves around data companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Whatsapp, Amazon etc.. Let us try to understand why is it that only these industries are able to grow and apply AI where a whole lot of other industries from manufacturing, helthcare, transportation, defence, government etc are limping for want of quality AI apps. How can we find the right environment for AI apps to thrive and grow.

The answer lies in the software centric AI sysytems that depend on the quantity of data to process. We brought terms like Big Data to annopunce to the world that whatever be the data, the quality compromising, we need lage amonts of data running into Giga bytes to be processed for the success of AI applications. And the sad fact was that we got this data only with data rich applications that generated lots of data, like data processing, email processing, information search, retail sales, etc. 

But it is a real fact that there are other sectors like manufacturing, healthcare etc which also need to reap the benefits of AI but do not have the capability to produce enormous amounts of data like data processing, emailing, search, retailing etc. 

The focus now needs to shift from software centric approach in AI development to  data centric approach. AI apps should be in a position to be used to reap benefits even with small amount  of high quality data or data that are very accurate and precise which otherwise we get from from experts in the concerned manufacturing or other data scarce industry areas. 

Research should continue in areas where we are able to compromise for the quantity of learning data, by having an improved measure of the quality of the data which we use in this learning data set. Very less high quality data should be able to suffice or replace for large quantity of questionable low quality data. Then only can we think of getting AI implemented and popular over all sectors of the economy. Banks can think of AI adoption as they are able to generate large amounts of data (big data) unlike an educational institute or manufacturing cos.

Future AI research should focus in this data scarce, high quality area then only can we reap the benefits of AI across sectors. Research by Andrew Ng that appeared in HBR of July 2021 titled AI doesn't have to be too expensive or complicated for your business (click here) was helpful in this writing. 

Moving from a software-centric approach to a data-centric approach in developing future AI systems appears fine, how do we achieve it ?

George