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Solar Powered Computers Planned for Rural India
securitas writes "BBC Technology correspondent Ram Dutt Tripathi reports on India's Uttar Pradesh state where authorities plan to use solar energy to power computers in rural village schools. The cost to run the solar panels is anticipated to be £1,000 per school. According to the report, up to 80% of homes have no power and most government-run primary schools have no power at all. In 2003 the Uttar Pradesh state government bought '1,000 computers for selected primary schools in all 70 districts' with another 1000 to be purchased this year, 'but most of these will not work because there is no power available.' The project is similar to a solar-powered school computer lab on the Isle of Wight."
Sounds like an interesting networking idea =)
...even though it would probably cost less to place a landline from a major power substation to the area where these computers are supposed to be. Solar power is still damned expensive, and it has its limitations.
Having just returned from the gym, I can't help but think of the clustering possibilities of a long row of treadmills and elliptical skiers ...
Um, am I completely blind or is there no link to donate, or number to call to donate? Yes, I know this is the comerical world and most of us don't care about the rest of the planet. But there's a few of us that do. Hell, I'd donate $20 now, and that makes me wonder how many others would... A lot of people don't want to donate to the christian childrens funds because they tend to push religion down people's throats.
This would likely have been true in the 1990s. But today, with a substantial increase in public education standards, as well as increased cooperation with non-govermental organizations (typically populated by well educated, well meaning young individuals), corruption has been on the decrease. Here's the stats on perceived corruption index. It shows India at 2.8. 10 is squeaky clean. UK, Canada at 8.7. US at 7.5. URL is here InfoPlease I would like to see rate of reduction of corruption. Overall, from talking with acquaintenances it has been on the decrease but clearly there's substantial room for improvement.
Getting the machines before the power infrastructure is in place is dumb, and NOT just for the obvious reason (having invested a lot of money into something that will take success with a second investment to become useful is always risky). It's dumb because having electricity in those isolated areas is useful for so many other things besides computers, it should have happened already.
There's tons of medical equipment that requires at least a little power, there's basic emergency communications, and there's all the simpler school supplies that require electricity. If none of these things justified getting some power to these people, computers in the classroom doesn't either.
We're not just talking relatively high powered systems (such as x-ray machines) that are the equivalent of entire desktop computer labs either. What about small centrifuges or cautery equipment for medicine? What about having enough radio for local government to report being hit by a bad storm or earthquake? What about a few lights to read by, so that school can be held indoors when it rains?
There are no compact, low energy computer systems that are any more efficient than those devices, and there are even surpluses of many of those devices in storage where they have been replaced by newer gear. Just imagine all the old filmstrip projectors or drafting tables in various urban school systems closets being put to use out in the country instead of gathering dust.
Who is John Cabal?
Solar Power!? Let me guess, they're not using AMDs :D
Seriously though, plug some pentium M's in there and you might be able to do the job fairly efficiently. That, and I've always wondered if you couldn't somehow recycle all that excess heat bled off by the chip itself. Kinda like the regenerative braking in cars in away...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
This story was so sad, I almost felt like offering an Indian my job.
It is already there!
>Computers are overrated as an educational tool.
That's not entirely true. About 15 years ago, in my school in a then-rural town (which is now a city) in India, they had introduced computers. Not many people knew anything about it, not the teachers even. They all had a basic understanding of how it worked, how to boot up (those were dos 2.1 or so days) and basic troubleshooting. FYI, these were old IBM busybee computers (if I remember correctly).
However, the school went about teaching "computers" in the same way everything else was addressed - starting with the basic first. The first year we spent understanding a lot of theory (admittely a part of learning was by rote), however, second year onwards they started teaching us to program (using BASICA or GWBASIC). This immediately changed the entire perspective towards computers. Whereas earlier when we (us students, the kids) would be happy to just spend a while fiddling with the keyboard or being in awe at the capability to delete characters as well on the screen (the earliest thing we had seen was the typewriter), now, there were hordes of students spending extra hours after school doing their assignments, learning programming fundamentals, etc. Sure, we weren't great programmers or weren't working on anything mission critical, but those computers made a hell of a lotta difference in our lives.
In the subsequent years, not only almost every other school got the computers, the students graduated with a reasonable computer background, and went on to take better paying jobs. I can go on and on about the benefits...
>but really paying to educating teachers in india more, and providing better facilities would help more than a room full of Apple IIs Teachers in India are paid a reasonably good salary. In fact, most women prefer teaching jobs since they are not too onerous, give them a number of benefits (the state covers the medical bills, and though you go to the state-owned hospitals, the doc appointments can he had within a day's notice usually). Secondary school (or high school) teachers, degree-level teachers and professors get paid even better of course.
However, I agree on better facilities. Sure, that'd make a big difference, but it's a long way in coming. I like to think that computers changed my small town in so many different ways (it is now one of the hubs of computer education in that part of my state, the jobs are plenty and people even freelance producing utility software for local businesses), and I'm sure the government is keen to replicate that model
http://efil.blogspot.com/
So what we have today is AC wall power being converted to DC in the PC power supply, then being converted back to AC, and then regulated DC on the motherboard. Some parts of the motherboard can directly run off the DC from the power supply. With solar power there is an additional DC/AC conversion stage to feed the power supply.
We might be better off with motherboards that were designed to run off loosely regulated 48VDC, like a lot of telecom equipment. This could be sourced from batteries, solar panels, or a simple DC power supply connected to an AC line. The motherboard would use DC/DC converters to convert the 48VDC to the required local regulated DC voltages.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat