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I have had been advocating energy conservation since long.
Apart from Energy generation from Renewables, Energy Saving is
the need of the hour in India. A Novel Scheme to replace Old and
inefficient agricultural pump sets: Out of the 26 Million Agricultural
pumpsets in the country many are old and inefficient. The power
tariff for farmers is minimal. Electricity is a high grade energy
which is needed in industries, domestic purposes, computers etc.
A scheme can be chalked out to replace the inefficient motors by
efficient ones. The cost of a 5 HP Electric motor because is about
Rs 20,000.A subsidy of Rs 15,000 can be provided to replace
these inefficient motors. This yields quick results and Energy
conservation is better than energy generation. Each Kwh saved
is each Kwh generated (1 US$= Rs 60). There must be some
contribution from the beneficiary otherwise he wont take care of
the system. Giving free leads to misuse. In 80s the then
Department of Non-Conventional Energy Sources(Now MNRE)
under Demonstration Programme installed over 4000 Water
Pumping Mills free of cost. In Andhra Pradesh about 500 were
installed. At that time a windmill was costing Rs 20,000. A reliable
windmill costs around Rs 80,000 at that time. Infact in our Filelds
in Muthukur, Nellore District, Andhra Pradesh 2 Wind mills were
installed. None of the windmills worked and vanished in no time.
Based on several studies carried out on agricultural pumpset
efficiency, it has been found that the pump efficiency varies from
25-35% due to various factors. By adopting BEE star lebelled
agricultural pumpsets, the efficiency can be enhanced upto 5052%. It is estimated that, by replacement of existing pumps with
the BEE star labelled pumps, the achievable saving potential is
30-40% and sectoral saving potential works out to be 4.34 BU per
year. Instead of huge investment on New Power projects, The
Government of India and different state Governments can jointly
plan a scheme to replace the existing old and inefficient
agricultural pumpsets with efficient ones. This yields quick results.
Energy conservation refers to reducing energy consumption
through using less of an energy service. Energy conservation
differs from efficient energy use, which refers to using less energy
for a constant service. For example, driving less is an example of