The File - May 16 , 2009 - (Page 1)

India’s fortnightly focus on electronics design May 16-31, 2009 Green Power: In harmony with our home By Saifur Rahman Fellow of the IEEE VP for New Initiatives and Outreach IEEE Power & Energy Society Director, Advanced Research Institute Virginia Tech Our world today lives and thrives on the use of oil. The United States alone consumes oil worth nearly Rs.5,062 crore ($1 billion) a day. Our economies are focused on accelerated growth, consumerism and industrialisation causing extensive irreparable damage to the earth. The scientific community has been discussing global warming and its ill effects for the longest time. For many years it seemed like a constant drone of the bees that the common man could not care about. The reason was that the man on the street did not understand the ramifications of his actions towards the earth and he thought that there was really nothing he could do as an individual to conserve the environment. So, is this the end? Will we survive the end we have created for ourselves? The answer should be “yes.” Rahman: Will we survive the end we have created for ourselves? A lot of countries are already looking at creating sustainable economies that conserve the planet. This can be done by utilising natural resources like water, wind and solar energy in our day-to-day applications thereby reducing our dependence on conventional sources, like fossil fuel, and ultimately eliminating the harmful effect of greenhouse gases. Renewable energy includes resources that restore themselves over short periods of time and do not diminish. Such include the sun, wind, moving water, organic plant and waste material (biomass), and the earth’s heat (geothermal). Severe shortage of power is one of the greatest obstacles to India’s development. Over 40 per cent of the country’s people, most living in the rural areas, do not have access to electricity and one-third of Indian businesses cite expensive and unreliable power as one of their main business constraints. India today is focusing on renewable resources that are expected to play a key role in accelerating development and sustainable growth in the country. Among the renewables, power generation from wind has emerged as one of the most successful programmes in India and has started making meaningful contributions to the overall power requirements of some Indian states. The total installed capacity of wind power is over 9,000MW, making India the fourth largest wind power generator after Germany, United States and Spain. With 15 manufacturing companies, India now has a good local production base for wind turbines. continued on page Tool-box simplifies life cycle assessment By Flora Vadas and Dr. Constantin Herrmann PE International Inside Trends 2 5 Solar energising India Lighting up with solar-based LEDs Designers create, environmentalists scrutinise. Although much progress has taken place towards re-cycling, not only materials, but also knowledge from envi- ronmental experts to designers, eco-design is still a concept in the making. When developing an eco-design product, the designer should consider the environmental impacts throughout the product’s life cycle, i.e. its manufacture, transport, use and End of Life (EoL). Studies that provide such data are called life cycle assessment (LCA), and have grown into a field of their own with specific expertise. Thus, there is a well-defined need to integrate LCA knowledge with product design. As the Eco-Design of the Energy Using Products (EuP) directive (2005/32/EC) puts it, “considering at the design stage a product’s environmental impact throughout its whole life cycle has a high potential to facilitate environmental improvement in a cost-effective way”. In this article, a tool-box that was developed as part of a project for the European Copper Institute will be presented. The tool-box enables designers to gain easy access to expertise in the field of LCA. The tool-box is, in fact, a model complex with an easyto-use interface that calculates environmental profiles of products. To assess options, changes continued on page In Focus 7 8 Open graphical design aids green engineering Chip-scale methods unlock renewable energy boom Events 6 2009 ICCNT, 3rd Renewable Energy India 2009 Expo, Nanotech India 2009, ENC2SP 2009 www.eetindia.com http://www.eetindia.co.in/STATIC/REDIRECT/Newsletter_090516_GS01.htm http://www.eetindia.co.in/STATIC/REDIRECT/Newsletter_090516_EETI02.htm

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The File - May 16 , 2009

The File - May 16 , 2009