Month: February 2010

Last week I saw a video about Electric cars / GM’s volt (see video at end) … which also talks about Green energy / Solar panels etc.

Then today morning I read this bit from my friend Nitin, which finally triggered this long due post.

It led me to think that all this hoopla about Electric Cars / Green Energy is probably not mere noise … there is a fundamental change that is happening which most of us are unaware about.

A change which is probably good for everyone – it is good for environment, for the energy consumers. Maybe bad for the oil companies, but think of it they have a huge market and limited supply say 50-100 years. So even if we start transitioning to green energy now, it will take at least 20-50 years to convert whole world to Green Energy, which per my understanding is the time left to us till we run out of fossil fuels.

Anyways, the best part that I liked about below video is, when they explain possibility of turning energy consumers to energy producers. See the bit between 6:00-7:00.

Let’s say homes have solar panels installed and during a hot summer day the “smart home” realizes it has everything charged up and doesnt need anymore solar energy. Now rather than “switching off” energy consumption, it will start sending out the energy to other energy users.

Final result – the consumer (we) may end up getting 2000-4000 $ per year for electricity generation, rather than paying for electricity … isnt that wonderful and amazing?

The future is here!

It is probably not fair to compare the two, still.

Also saw this screenshot by the blog owner, Arun Prabhudesai, about the dismal Internet speed at India (screenshot below) … as we can see the internet speed is hardly 0.4MBPS. (and this is broadband high speed connection, not the dialup types which we used to use 8 years back that kept loading forever)

Now, Last time I was at delhi, they used to charge around Rs 700 (I had Airtel broadband). (around 15.5$) … although unitary methods should not be used for such cases but still by simple maths this turns out 30$ to use 1MB/s speed in India. (15.5$/0.5)

I thought to check internet speed at my home @ Pennsylvania to see how it turns out.

It turned out to be 20 MB/s!!

Now, I have comcast here and I pay around 45$ per month (incidentally, I used to pay 20$ promotional price for first six month.)

So in this case, it comes out around 2.25$ to use 1MB/s in US.

Summary – from elementary mathematics it sounds like we pay 10-15 times more in India, and we get a dismal service… still we have made some progress so far, so hopefully will improve upon in future.

Less said the better, we do have a long way to go.

PS – here is the video-