Strategy for utilising solar energy

For producing quality solar panels, quality cells, imported robotic machinery, premium materials, good craftsmanship and independent quality control institutions and a large consumer base are a prerequisite.

According to industry standards, their performance is guaranteed for 25 years at a minimum efficiency of 80 per cent, with zero tolerances. The price of a certified IEC compliant photovoltaic solar panel made to international standards has fallen by as much as 60 per cent since its peak in 2008.

Lower start-up costs are important for a developing country like Pakistan. Concerns about global warming and pollution are driving the interest in this safe renewable energy technology worldwide.

At the current international FOB price of one dollar and fifty cents per watt from the previous price of $5 per watt, the solar photovoltaic technology has now finally come of age and has now attained grid parity.

Like all other developing economies of South Asia, Pakistan also needs sustainable renewable energy because its commercial energy needs are rapidly increasing, especially in cities, while most of the remote villages in rural areas are still not covered by the grid.

Therefore, the poor, specially women and children, are forced to use fuels like kerosene and biomass that pollute and cause respiratory illnesses. Ending energy poverty is about more than helping people see at night; it’s about economic opportunities, safer and healthier communities, better educational opportunities and connection to the rest of the world, besides creating more jobs in the sale, installations and repairs of this new technology.

Solar power is the best alternative because it does not require any prior infrastructure or use of existing resources. It’s safe for night operation and can generate power for other uses, such as charging cellphones or powering medical equipment, refrigeration of vaccines in remote areas, powering computers, wi-fi hot spots, thus opening doors of telecommunications worldwide.

All countries in South Asia are promoting the use of solar technology by tax incentives, liberal imports, user-friendly policies, availability of bank financing and even microfinancing for solar home systems in rural areas.

Unfortunately we have already lost the opportunity to earn carbon credits from the emission reduction projects under the carbon development mechanism (CDM) as the first round of Kyota Protocol is due to expire at the end of the current year. As posted on the website of the Alternate (sic) Energy Development Board.

The ministry of water and power has at last finally exempted PV modules, inverters, charge controllers and batteries as eligible for exemption from all taxes/duties irrespective of the fact that they are imported together or separately.

Now it is for our business class to provide leadership to our youth in the development of this technology which can instantly light up the lives of all segments of our society, both in rural and urban areas.

Sunlight is always free, and the energy generated from this source is a gift of nature. All we need is a strategic policy for the promotion of solar technology. At this moment and time it is possible to buy a small 20 watt solar panel complete with energy home system consisting of two LED bulbs, charge controller and seven ampere-hour battery acid/gell capable of providing lighting, charging a cellphone and powering a transistor radio for just $50, which is just enough to satisfy the needs of a large segment of our population as their prime source of power.

Samsung Galaxy S3

Samsung released their highly anticipated Galaxy S3 smartphone earlier this summer under the tagline, "The Next Big Thing is Here." Since then, the Korean tech company has sold over 10 million units. The Samsung Galaxy S3 features top of the line software, features and design, but is it the best smartphone on the market today?

Very possibly, yes. To begin, the Samsung Galaxy S3 comes jam-packed with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 4G LTE/HSPA+ 2 capability, and a super-fast dual-core processor. The only noticeable issues with Samsung's new smartphone are a screen that's not as bright as the competition, and S Voice, their weak response to the iPhone's electronic assistant, Siri.

As for the design, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is a sleeker, bigger take on the previous S2 model. The Galaxy S3 comes in blue or white. It doesn't feature a lot of glitz and glamour (no glass, ceramic or flashy colors), but it is pretty much the best-designed plastic phone on the market.

The redesign focuses on giving the new phone a sleeker plastic body to fight claims that Samsung phones look cheap, while at the same time keeping their light, durable feel intact. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is smoother and glossier than the S2. Samsung smoothed the edges of the Galaxy S3 to give the back the feel of a single piece of plastic, a shell. The slick new smartphone feels good in your hands, slick but warm to the touch and not slippery. However, the biggest design flaw may be how reflective the plastic surface is.

It seems pretty clear that for Samsung size matters and the Galaxy S3 is a big device. At 5.4 inches by 2.8 inches it's just a little bit bigger and thicker than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. This isn't the biggest Samsung smartphone though, that honor goes to the Galaxy Note, a smartphone-tablet hybrid that demonstrates Samsung's interest in blurring the line between the two devices.

Above the screen Samsung placed proximity and ambient light sensors, an LED indicator and a 1.9 mega-pixel front-facing camera. At the bottom sits the home button. The thin rectangular shape is not ideal, as opposed to Apple's thumb-fitting circular button. On either side of the home button are the "back" and "menu" buttons, which are not tactile. The light which illuminates them fades away a few seconds after each use.

Volume control is located on the left and the power button is on the right. On the back there is an 8-megapixel camera with flash, and a microSD card slot and Near-Field Communication (NFC)-capable battery under the cover. The NFC is what allows S Beam, a new feature that lets you seamlessly share video, pictures and information by tapping to Samsung Galaxy S3 phones together.

The S3's screen features a HD Super AMOLED display with a 1,280x720-pixel resolution. This means more screen real estate than ever before (aside from the Note). You can even do two things at once, like text and watch a video at the same time. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the one of the first smartphones to use Corning's Gorilla Glass 2. This thinner, light and more responsive material supposedly lets the screen shine brighter. The S3 screen isn't as bright as other phones, but the colors shine in the dark and it is extremely reactive, needing just a light brush to activate the display.

So is the Samsung Galaxy S3 the best smartphone available today? It's hard to say but in many ways Samsung's latest device outshines even the iPhone 4S in pretty much every category besides Siri vs. S Voice. For now the Samsung Galaxy S3 is top dog, and it has the sales figures to prove it, but that may all change when the Apple unleashes the newest iPhone this fall.

Life on the water

What do you do for 14 days in the middle of a really big ocean? You eat and sleep, read and sleep, eat and go to shows you’d never bother with at home. You unwind, you chat with other travelers, you stroll the decks, buffeted by wind and sometimes rain.

Grateful for sunny weather, we did not encounter rough seas. Au contraire: You had to take to your bed and concentrate before you feel the ship’s motion, if then. (It should be noted that this cruise started on April 15, the 50th anniversary of the Titanic’s demise, and just weeks after Costa Concordia was driven to the rocks off the western coast of Italy.

The food, of course, is obscenely delicious and beautifully presented by a crew of servers and headwaiters, impeccably uniformed, sometimes very personal. All I had to do at dessert, for example, is mention that I like just about anything chocolate, and samples of chocolate desserts appeared unbidden at my place.

One evening I said I wanted to try something else. Oliver pretended shock but he brought me the new item – accompanied by a dish of chocolate ice cream. He would introduce the items on the daily menu: “This is so yummy in your tummy,” he would announce, introducing an entree.

We appreciated the size of our stateroom and the elegant look of it after our room steward made it up every day, sometimes twice a day. We had a “handicapped” cabin in case I’d need a wheelchair. Never did, and I was reassured that no one had to be refused such a perk. It was spacious and we loved it.

Anthony, the room steward, was so patient. Early on, I slipped and fell in the shower, barking one elbow. Didn’t hurt, but that darned thing wouldn’t quit bleeding. It was where I couldn’t see it and for awhile I was mystified at finding bloodstains in the unlikeliest places. I felt like the Cat in the Hat, “here and there, and everywhere.” One tiny drop on the bed sheet, and the whole bed was changed. Now, that’s overkill, but Anthony insisted. He also insisted I let him take the items of my stained clothing to the laundry and personally oversaw their handling.

Sure, such personal service is probably approved by the company to forestall a law suit, but it did make me feel pampered.

He was from Jamaica and I loved his accent. He appeared to be maybe 40 years old, and has three children, two in college and another in prep school. What a strain such absences must place upon a family.

The Liberty of the Seas was filled with an interior “shopping mall” and we could watch whatever was going on from our bow window on the 5th deck above it. People ambled around, dropping in at an ice cream parlor and emerging with cones and smiles. You could not hear a thing most times, even though a lot of people were ambling. The interior cabins were less expensive than the exterior balcony rooms with balconies.

Accustomed as we were to outdoor light gradually increasing the third day we were at sea, Dave and I really overslept one morning, but we thought it was overcast and felt no eagerness to get up and about. We turned over and went back to sleep without checking a clock, and lost all sense of time, until someone came knocking on our door.

“Sallie? Dave? Are you all right?” someone called through the heavy doors.

“Sure,” says one of us, jolted a bit by the method of being wakened. “Why so early?”

“It’s six-thirty,” said the intruder. “In the evening.

Well, it didn’t take me long to lose my world traveler cred. Corrections to last week’s column follow:

Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands, but Santa Cruz is capital. And the archipelago lies off the northwestern corner of Africa, Morocco specifically. Essentially autonomous, the Canaries are seen as a “Nationality of Spain.”

Gov’t to Replace Mercury Streetlights With LED Lights

For activity attention and carbon abatement, as able-bodied as automated development, the Bureau of Energy, beneath the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), behest bygone (June 27) that the Executive Yuan (the Cabinet) has accustomed to advance NT$2.8 billion in three years for replacing absolute 326,000 mercury streetlights with LED (light abounding diode) streetlights, a move which will actualize NT$4.5 billion of assembly value.

Of the amount, accessible behest for at atomic 273,000 LED streetlights will be completed by the end of this year, in alertness for accession by the average of next year.

The MOEA estimated that the accession of 326,000 LED streetlights will advance to ability attention of 143 actor kilowatt/hour annually and abate 87,500 metric bags of CO2 emission, agnate to the carbon-absorption bulk of 255 Daan backwoods esplanade in Taipei.

The accumulation of 326,000 LED streetlights will annual for beneath than 20% of Taiwan’s absolute streetlights calculation 1.57 million.

Shen Shih-hung, administrator accepted of Environmental Protection Administration, proposed to accept state-owned Taiwan Ability Company angel the backup of all the absolute streetlights with LED streetlights. Ou Chia-jui, administrator accepted of the Bureau of Energy, however, declared that prices of LED lighting will abatement forth with abstruse advance and borough governments can install LED lights with accumulation in ability bills, after charge of subsidies from the axial government.

Ou Chia-jui acclaimed that LED ablaze boasts 60% of ability attention and continued artefact life. LED streetlight has the accomplished beam efficiency, while mercury ablaze has the everyman efficiency.

The LED streetlight accession activity was formulated by the Bureau of Activity and consists of three sub-projects.

The activity was included into the “economic countermeasures” of the Executive Yuan endure December.

Under the aboriginal subproject, Taipower will angel Keelung City, Hsinchu City, and Chiayi City for backup of 53,000 mercury streetlights with LED lights, while beneath the additional and third subprojects, 23,000 streetlights in limited areas and adopted islands and 250,000 streetlights in burghal areas will be replaced.

In cartoons, acceptable account are generally represented symbolically by a ablaze ball axis on. In the Robbinsdale School District, a new abstraction aimed at extenuative money involves the opposite.

Robbinsdale Area Schools appear it's abutting an action alleged Schools for Activity Ability (SEE).

"SEE provides schools with no-cost and bargain strategies and activities to advice lower their schools' activity costs," said Sheri Brunner, Robbinsdale's Activity Ability Coordinator. "The affairs is advised for K-12 schools to apparatus a systemized plan announcement able ability operations and behavior modification through activity awareness."

Brunner said the amount to light, heat, air condition, and contrarily ability schools is about additional alone to salaries, and added than textbooks and computers combined.

"During this year, we are absorption on empowerment: advertent means that we can accomplish simple changes in our circadian routines to save - not alone our district's activity costs, but extenuative activity for everyone's benefit," said Brunner. "Not alone are we extenuative money, we are teaching the acceptance in our commune about accomplishing the appropriate affair - for themselves and for approaching generations."

Can Solar Panels and Celebrated Canning Get Along?

I accept that celebrated canning in the appropriate ambience – a advantageous adjacency – can be intrinsically green. Most celebrated buildings, at atomic the ones complete afore the canicule of freeways and burghal flight, are on walkable streets in almost axial locations. They represent embodied activity and abstracts that would be captivated if the aforementioned bulk of amplitude and the aforementioned action had to be complete anew. Also, getting congenital afore “the thermostat age,” as my acquaintance Steve Mouzon calls it, abounding of them were congenital with absorption to altitude and with locally sourced materials, giving them environmentally benign characteristics as a amount of design.

But, by definition, celebrated barrio do not accept the latest technology unless it is added abounding years later. I accede with Steve that technology can be overrated as an ecology cure-all, but there are acutely some forms of blooming technology that can strengthen the ecology contour of earlier buildings. This raises the aerial affair of how abundant afterlight can and should action afterwards compromising the building’s celebrated character.

A archetypal battle – or perceived battle – of absolutely this blazon has been traveling on in Washington’s celebrated Cleveland Park district, area homeowners were denied permission to install arresting rooftop solar panels by a bounded commission.

In a May 31 accommodation that some saw as attached solar ability in the District, the Celebrated Canning Review Board, afterwards initially deadlocking on the issue, voted 4-3 adjoin acknowledging the Chandler-Wingate proposal. Although the lath had no argument to the panels that were placed on the rear addition, those who voted adjoin the angle banned of the eight panels on the west ancillary of the abode because of their afterimage from the artery ...

The guidelines for solar panels on roofs of celebrated barrio were adopted by the HPRB in 1997. They state: ‘On a collapsed roof, solar panels should be amid so they are not arresting from the accessible street. If amid on a angled roof building, they should alone be installed on rear slopes that are not arresting from a accessible street.'

’The aftereffect of that is that any abode that is south or west adverse would not be able to use solar,’ [homeowner Mark] Chandler said. ‘By definition, that’s bisected the houses’ in DC.’

Orton writes that the owners had already compromised by proposing panels alone on the west ancillary of the roof and not the south ancillary that faces the street. If the panels were placed on the south side, Chandler and Laurie Wingate would be able to abate their ability burning from the filigree by 70 percent. Instead, they proposed 25 panels on the rear and west side, which would still abate burning by 42 percent. They after agreed to a advancement by the city’s Celebrated Canning Office that they abolish four of the west-facing panels, which bargain the abeyant accumulation to 30 percent.

Those are accurate concerns, and I would add that the affidavit for attention celebrated appearance go able-bodied above the economic. But Layman goes on to agenda that he supports a ban on solar panels “on the front, arresting portion" of a house, which he believes to be Washington’s accepted policy. The botheration is that adjustment on the foreground wasn’t an affair in the Chandler-Wingate case. They had already foregone adjustment in the foreground in an attack at a reasonable compromise.

California’s Solar Rights Act prohibits bounded governments from restrictions on solar activity systems unless they are "reasonable." A advertisement by the state’s Office of Celebrated Canning says that "reasonable restrictions" beneath the law "include those that do not decidedly access the amount of the arrangement or decidedly abatement its ability or defined achievement or acquiesce for an another arrangement of commensurable cost, ability and activity attention benefits."