GoGreenIdeas

Ahmedabad, Nov 11 (UNI) Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today said the countries that have surplus solar energy, should form a group and have a corpus fund to deal with energy crisis. ''This group which will mostly comprise of developing countries, can work together to save humanity from an energy crisis,'' he said while addressing a gathering at the inaugural session of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) here.

In a lighter vein, he said,''Poets and scientists alike are all after the moon and seems everybody is running away from the sun, which is a major source of energy.'' President A P J Abdul Kalam who inaugurated the session, welcomed his suggestion and said the PRL should take it up as a challenge and work on a solar cell. He said increasing the solar photovoltaic cell efficiency from the existing 15 per cent to 45 per cent using silicon as a base with Carbon Nano Tube is an important research challenge.

Mr Modi also said Gujarat has a 1600-km long coastline that should be effectively used and called upon scientists to come up with solutions for quakes and tsunamis as the state lies on seismic zone 5. He also lamented that today's generation was more oriented towards IT, medicine and other career options than pure sciences. He said if a survey is conducted among 100 students, hardly one or two would talk of science as a career.
'Scientists are like 'rishis' (sages) who are into 'sadhna' (penace). There's no glamour, no media publicity in science and therefore the youth today are opting more for IT.'' ''Thankfully, President Kalam is a scientist and we can hope that more and more people will emulate him and take to science,'' he added.

Twenty-eight-year old Rafi Alam in New Delhi has designed a two-wheeler that can run on both solar energy as well as wind power. It took Rafi two years to design this scooter and incidentally the final version was ready on the World Environment Day.

With his redesigned two-wheeler he seeks to provide a unique solution to the energy crisis as well as the problem of pollution as the scooter propels itself by using both solar energy and wind power.

The scooter is fitted with a few electrical gadgets and uses both solar and wind energy simultaneously to charge a battery that then runs the vehicle. The solar panel is installed on the front of the vehicle while a fan that delivers wind energy has been mounted on the front wheel cap.

“It's a button operated scooter. There is no mechanism involved and there is only one electrical circuit working. There is a solar panel which charges the battery and this drives the motor which in turn drives the scooter,” said Rafi Alam. For extreme emergencies, the scooter has a small petrol tank but Alam has also ensured that the battery keeps charging itself while the scooter is running on petrol so that the shift can be made after some time.

Once fully charged, vehicle can run between 80 to 100 kilometers at a speed of 50-60 kilometers per hour. As all the innovations come at a price this innovation too has a price tag of 934 US dollars attached to it.

With formal education only up to class IX, Rafi is currently working as a supervisory mechanic at a car workshop in Delhi. Rafi does not want to limit his creativity to scooter only. He wants to replicate the technology on four-wheelers too.