Power Crisis in Kerala - Part 2

ONE EARTH ONE LIFE: Electricity Crisis in Kerala and Possible Options -2008:

'via Blog this'

English: On 140 acres of unused land on Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., 70,000 solar panels are part of a solar photovoltaic array that will generate 15 megawatts of solar power for the base. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My 'crazy' post on power crisis in Kerala attracted some attention in terms of visitors. So I am attempting a followup post motivated by this blog (link above) by Harish that summarises the situation pretty much. The blog says "Possible Options -2008", and it was actually posted last year and in all probability the situation and statistics have probably worsened since. It is interesting to note that our hunt for “possible solutions” started 5 years back with no sign of any possible solutions in the horizon. So let us continue our lateral exploration.

How can the government incentivise local power generation, whether it is solar, wind or mini-micro hydel projects? Is it possible for individual power producers to contribute directly to the grid? Apparently the model is being considered in Middle East to future-proof their energy requirements. Can we implement the model in God’s own country?

Here is how it might work: Usually individuals generate solar power when they cannot consume it, that is in the morning hours. So storage in the form of batteries is an expensive and cumbersome (to maintain) requirement for such systems. If we can give the power generated in the morning hours to industries that consume it and get compensated in the night we do not need storage/batteries! Avoiding the storage requirement would reduce the cost of solar power generation by more than half! The management of individual/group energy contributions to the grid can be managed and incentivised by government by adopting the Microfinance (Microenergy rather) paradigm that originated from the Indian subcontinent. I am curious to know what the domain experts think about this model.

In a ‘possible - 2014’ post I shall laterally explore the potential of biofilms and energy trapping surface paints for harvesting solar energy. On a lighter note, just planting a tree could also trap substantial solar energy!

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Between him and me

A medical student checking blood pressure using a sphygmomanometer and stethoscope. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

mystic muses: The dummy medical student’s guide to the medical viva exam


Thanks +Feroze Kaliyadan for sharing the tricks of the trade! Here are few real life stories narrated in first person, though I am not the hero in all ;)

Our Anatomy department gave us strict instructions not to follow BD Chaurasia’s Human Anatomy textbook (since it was concise and sweet) and to use Grey’s Anatomy always. [For those non-medicos out there, Grey’s anatomy is a big fat book, that is good for weight lifting (watching the colourful pictures of chiselled pectorals). Reading it especially in the first year of your medical education will strip your life of all its colour (making it Grey)!]

During the first internal viva exam, the examiner asked me whether I refer any book other than Grey’s. Without thinking, I said Yes.
Which one? The examiner asked.
Then only I realised the trap. I knew the names of Grey’s and Chaurasia only!
Procter and Gamble sir, I replied confidently.
The examiner seemed satisfied. I am sure he went to the library afterwards to hunt for the new anatomy book authored by Procter and Gamble.

My friend and senior Bobby (Award winning scriptwriter of the Bobby-Sanjay duo) has portrayed a patient who helps the examinees by telling them the positive findings that they should not miss in him. (Salim Kumar in Ayalum Njanum Thammil). I have seen “Dermatology PG exam veteran” patients who would tell you his enlarged nerves and the diagnosis. Since I could speak Malayalam and Kannada, I was the official translator during the dermatology PG exam for all my seniors from the north. Needless to say, I had to know all the relevant history and the examination findings and the translation would actually be a dictation. But my additional efforts were always well compensated by the Post-Exam ‘daru’.

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Potential Solutions to Kerala's Power Crisis

To be mathematically correct, I have lived only 40% of my life in my home state of Kerala, often called the God’s own country. I was born in a village (villages in Kerala are not really villages any more) called Kombodinjamakkal in central Kerala. Our state (it is more important to be politically correct here than mathematically correct) is plagued by two impending disasters. A looming power crisis because of the angry rain gods scourging the bourgeois for exploiting its hydro electric power for such a long time. The second is the pathetic waste management, all because of the inefficiency of our neighbour and the government to remove the wastes from our backyard!

Ayyappan Kavu Ulsavam (Photo credit: beapen)

Why am I getting into this quagmire? Because I am a winner of multiple innocentive challenges and I want to show off. Hey, I am entitled to some self promotion on my blog. This is an attempt to give some lateral thinking perspective (if you will) to these complicated problems. But needless to say that I have no prior experience in this.

OK, let us start with energy or power. I don’t know much about both except that both have the same unit for measurement. Political power has a different unit by the way! I also know that the two easily available, clean energy sources are the sun and the wind. Wind energy is proportional to the cube of wind velocity. (Hey, I seem to know more than I thought). So a wind turbine has to be mounted on a tower for effective functioning and may not be cost effective in Kerala. Besides we don’t have much free space with an exceptionally high population density in spite of being manpower suppliers of the world for well over a decade.

That leaves the energy from the sun. Solar energy is traditionally harvested with photovoltaic cells made out of silicon wafers. We do not produce enough silicon to harvest solar energy. If gold could trap sunlight we could have made use of the gold our housewives have accumulated over the years.

Solar water heaters are effectively being used in Kerala. In my house, we cover the panels of our solar heater to prevent excessive heating of water! Water is abundant enough to trap solar energy too. Is there any way to produce electricity from hot water? Do you think a modified steam turbine would be an answer to our energy woes? Feel free to post your ideas here. Maybe men of power (pun intended) would someday see this and experiment (and implement) with our ideas! When I get some fresh ideas for waste management, I will post it here. Well do you have any?

Watch the video posted below. (Credit: Timothy Sohacki - YouTube )

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Freaking Awesome Dermatology

A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor: Why I Didn't Do Dermatology: I've mentioned on this blog before that I had good grades and scores in med school, although not freaking awesome. So it seems like the...

English: Harvard Medical School (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dear Fizzy

Don’t you think you are being too harsh on us dermatologists? I do understand your feeling and I agree that there is an element of truth in some of your arguments. I shall try to give you an Indian perspective from my experience. You may not know the people mentioned here. You will find them all here.

My grades were average and I chose dermatology because it was one of the few options available to me. If you practice in rural India, muscle weakness is often not induced by the BoNT from a pretty dermatologist’s needle, but by the much detested M Leprae. Daily patient count of a busy academic dermatology department will be almost equal to the population of a small US town. So dermatology practice is not always attractive in this part of the world though things are changing fast. But I match your stereotype because I left all this behind and crossed the Arabian sea in search of fools gold.

I am sorry to hear that you met mostly terrible people in dermatology. But I found few of the most interesting people I have ever known in this specialty. I have seen many with more than a passing interest in photography and fine arts. I have known Uncle Appukuttan and authors of non-dermatology books. I have seen artists and musicians all within this specialty.

I really enjoyed my PG days in dermatology. If you want to know how much fun we have had, you must watch the Indian movie 3 idiots. I have seen the entire plot unfolding in front of my very eyes during my PG days. We were the only other cricket team in the world (besides Indian national team) with Sachin as the opener :-)

Hey Fizzy, I am standing at a precipice now. Behind me is the ‘freaking awesome' dermatology. In front of me is 'The Pond' that I am planning to take a plunge into. My role model is a dermatologist who gave up dermatology for public health.

See, Initially I set out to prove you wrong. But ultimately we all seem to fit your stereotype!

Thanks for the insights.

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How to teach alternative medicine to your dog

A harmonic oscillator in classical mechanics (A-B) and quantum mechanics (C-H). In (A-B), a ball, attached to a spring, oscillates back and forth. (C-H) are six solutions to the Schrödinger Equation for this situation. The horizontal axis is position, the vertical axis is the real part (blue) or imaginary part (red) of the wavefunction. (C,D,E,F), but not (G,H), are stationary states (energy eigenstates), which come from solutions to the Time-Independent Schrödinger Equation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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me: Hey Gem. Where have you been?

Gem: Just came back from Italy. I was on a mission to find out how Italians manufacture and sell helicopters.

me: oh, interesting! Just wanted to ask you something. Do you know anything about quantum mechanics?

Gem: Sure, I have taught quantum mechanics to my dog. But he understood the entire concept in just one sentence.

me: Oh, what was that? BTW you have an intelligent dog!

Gem: The act of measurement causes the set of probabilities to immediately and randomly assume only one of the possible values. The act of measurement changes everything.

me: Oh, What a Bohr (My expression was blank. So the readers may safely assume that the pun was not intended). The act of measurement is fundamental to us doctors. We take measurements all the time. BP, Pulse, Blood sugar.... And we measure many things during clinical trials!

Gem: You should try alternative medicine then! They don't measure much.

me: Don't tell me you believe in the memory of water molecules beyond the Avagadro limit in homeopathy or the healing powers of yoga. Orac would plan a very respectful insolence on your beliefs.

Gem: See that's the problem. You make fun of Dr Prasad's anti-diabetic laddoos. You insist that only RCTs can differentiate a placebo from a drug. I do agree with you. But all I am saying is that before the act of RCT a placebo could be a drug and a drug could be a placebo. All I am concerned about is the effect.

me: But how??

Gem: If you still don't understand, ask my dog.

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The brighter Moon

English: The brighter Moon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Gem is skeptical, not passionate and gets easily bored. But Gem considers it the main ingredient of a quintessential innovative mind. Passion clouds your judgement. You tend to miss the negatives. Cognizance of the unfavorable is crucial for progress.

Gem remains stationary. The world grows around him. Does the umbilical connections to the past become a liability? May be, May be not..

Gem is bad at making small talk. Gem is uncomfortable with the social pattern of networking and rapport building. Gem perceives it as a waste of time.

Gem finds it difficult to turn his thoughts off while sleeping. Gem's best ideas struck him in his dreams...

Gem is taking a leap into the cold pacific ocean with a lifeboat and Richard Parker. There is no shipwreck though. The lifeboat could be big enough and Richard Parker is just a cat.

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The elusive Kallana (Stone Elephant)

Elephant Self-Portrait (Photo credit: Cybjorg)

Kallana - കല്ലാന  (the literal translation would be stone elephant) is an elusive species of elephant supposed to be seen in Kerala, that belongs to the realm of cryptozoology. The locals describe it as a adult elephant with a maximum height of 5 feet, but with normal trunk and tail. Till recently it was only a local folklore like the bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. Recently one was captured, but whether it is a mutant pygmy elephant or a new species has yet to be ascertained. Even a genetic test could be inconclusive as proof of many such elephants with the same genotype and phenotypic presentation is needed for defining a species. Well documented pygmy elephant species (Elephas maximus borneensis) has been described in other parts of the world.

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