Saturday, April 7, 2007

Power cuts – Summer 2007 in Pune,India.


It's April-That signals the start of summer in India! Well, should say, it is already here…Coz there was this news the other day that mercury crossed the 40 degree Celsius mark in the first week of April! Which means that this summer is gonna be bloody hot and couple that with the fact that there are going to be power cuts due to power shortages this summer! This makes matters waaay worse!

Take today....From morning, the power’s gone off 3 times in 3 hours! And the supply was OFF for a good 30 mins on two of those occasions. Let me tell you, it gets terribly hot and sweaty in 5 mins without a cooler or a fan. So imagine, 30 mins! And it’s more irritating when you are working on the computer.Specially for people like me who are not used to pressing ‘CTRL + S’ every now and then. Reason: For five days, I work in an AC office where the power outages and brownouts are taken care of. So that makes life harder on weekends when working from home. (** Note to self: Press ‘CTRL+S’ after every minute**) Alrite, I did that just now…

State Electricity Boards alone can’t be blamed for the Power Cuts. We, the citizens, are also accountable.Consider this...

  • How many people in India pay the electricity bills on time?...Or do they pay it at all?!!
  • How many of us try to save electricity?…Or even bother to give 'Saving' a thought?

Well, if we can’t do these simple things, then there is no use blaming the authority.Nothing will change if people don't follow the system.

There are a couple of painless ways that we (Software Engineers/Computer Users) can implement in our daily routine which will go a long way in ‘Saving’ electricity.

Shut down the computers before leaving home everyday. Tell me a very good reason why you wanna just logoff…. Coz u can log back in again in quickly next day! Gimme a break!!I don't buy that nonsense.With hi-end computers these days,it takes only a minute to log in. It’s ridiculous when people say that they need to get to their inboxes faster. Come on! Honestly, do these people really start working the minute they log into their so called Workstations. I have seen people reading/checking/forwarding mails for the first half an hour. Yes, some people are very busy.But how many …I say, about 5% of them.Rest, 95% can manage to wait for a minute. Isn’t that a reasonable demand?

Switch off the monitor!!!! It saves about 80% electricity…It is a fact! So the next time you need go out for a smoko/coffee/cuppa, please switch off the monitors.It makes a huge difference. For detailed analysis of the savings, click here.

Pretty simple.Aren’t they? But hardly followed!Anyways, I did me bit by writing about it and Thanks to you blokes/sheilas for reading it. They say “A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”. So I will be really glad if atleast a single person hard codes these two simple things in his/her subconscious mind and uses them daily. Cheers!

More tips on saving electricity...Visit following links

1) http://www.ontariotenants.ca/apartment_living/electricity-savings.phtml

2) http://www.good-energy.co.uk/energy_saving_tips

3) Energy Saving tips- ACs

4) Energy Saving tips-Refrigerators

5) Saving Electricity (Good website detailing everything about electricity from the basics to 'how-to' stuff and some pretty neat energy saving tips too!)

3 comments:

SurAj said...

well said mate ! The electric power problem is indeed a people-problem.

The "cooler" is a problem - but I feel that not having enough electric power could be a big handicap for the Indian economy overall.

Fingers crossed - things will improve :)

Samir M said...

Rohan the reformer..lol :-)

You make some good points bro. People take a lot of things for granted.

The worst electricity outage I've seen here (when I wuz in Baltimore) was 3 times in a year.

Amit said...

Good to know you are making some efforts rather than just bitch about the system. As (ex)electrical engineers, energy conservation should be high on our priority list =))