1. Bought an induction heater
Is this a big deal? Read on.
Normal stoves--whether the naked flame type or the heating plate/coil type--cook food by heat transfer. This means that heat is generated in one place and transferred to the target by conduction (being in contact), convection or radiation.
While these stoves are simple to use, they are inefficient. About 30-40% of total energy generated is considered lost for non-essential tasks such as wastage in convection and radiation, heating the stove base and vessel handles etc.
Enter the induction cooker. This device generates heat within the vessel, eliminating the need for heat transfer. There have been several induction heaters available in India for some time now (both imported and locally-made), and the prices have been dropping. I am now on my second induction heater (the first, imported from South East Asia, had stopped working after a few months), and I'm happy to report it's working fine for about 6 months. This one can prepare 3 cups of tea in about 2 minutes, consuming around 0.09 watts of power (costs about INR 0.3, comparing favourably with LPG, even though the latter is subsidized).
On the minus side, the 'digital' interface of the induction cooker is daunting to some. To others, a problem is that the heat is localized at the bottom of the dish, and not spread throughout the dish.
The induction heater at home--sleek, powerful and energy efficient.2. Installed a solar heating system
Somewhat expensive at INR 25K, the solar heating system auguments my electric water heater, but works even when there is no power (not an unusual event in India) !. The hot water storage of 100 liters (with the water reaching about 80 degree Celsius in 3 hours of sunlight) is usually sufficient for a family of 4. Considering that sunlight is the most abundant of power sources in sunny Kerala, this is really optimal use of the ambient energy sources.
However, the savings of electricity is only part of the story. My hot water line also ends up in the kitchen, where the hot water is used for pre-heating cooking vessels, and even directly for cooking (esp. for cooking rice, boiling drinking water, and similar 'heavy-duty' cooking duties). I guess this shaves off about 20% of my cooking gas bills.
The solar heater atop the second floor terrace at home. The Moringa oleiferain the foreground has yielded profusely this year)
3. Installed a domestic-waste biogas plant
No, not (yet) the integrated Chinese model where everything is recycled (but not far from it). I've just installed a biogas plant that gives me 2 hrs of clean, non-sooty biogas to burn. What do I feed it? The digester takes in food waste, vegetable cuttings, water used for washing fish/meat, fruit waste etc. It can take about 5 kg of waste a day. A 4 kg watermelon provides 2 kg of 'waste' that feeds the plant for a couple of days. A jackfruit (Artocarpus hetrophyllus, available for about INR 30 a fruit), apparently can help generate 2-hours of cooking gas per day for a whole week...!
There are very good reasons why this plant is a good idea. First, it provides a place to dump up to 5 kg of all kinds of vegetable, fish, meat and cooked waste, keeping your garbage to a minimum. Second, if you are feeling adventurous, you can divert your toilet to this, reducing your drainage and public ecological footprint. Third, the refuse from your dogs, cats, and other pets can also be used to feed the plant. Fourth, the biogas plant gives you about 2 hours of cooking gas every day. Finally, the slurry which is the output of the digester is highly reduced in volume and is a potent fertilizer--in fact, you are warned to dilute it at least 1:5 before you apply it to your kitchen garden.
Speaking about kitchen gardens, mine's now getting bigger: I already have tomato, brinjal (eggplant), okra, passion fruit, and Amaranthus spp., presently, but have lots more coming up to feed on the slurry.
The biogas digester while being installed. This beast consumes 5 kg of food and vegetable wasteand yields about 2 hours of smell-free, soot-free flame every day.
After completion of installation. The drum is now nearlyfull of gas and will produce sufficient gas for about 100-120 minutes
Will post my experiences later...do post if you have queries...
17 comments:
Very nice, I am jealous...and thrilled too - doing practically what I preach
Specifically, what else do you use the induction heater for? Boil milk? How safe are the vessels to handle by elderly people/with shaky hands
I use it mainly for making tea as well heating stuff out of the refrigerator.
Induction heaters are safe for everyone, including the elderly, for the following reasons:
* There is no naked flame
* There is no hot cooking surface
* Switching on and off are instantaneous--the stove doesn't retain any residual heat
* Removing the vessel automatically switches off the stove
* Temperature and timings can be precisely controlled
Living in an apt does not give me the kind of possibilities that you have managed.Wondering what I have done to reduce my e-f. Primarily cutting down on travel - working as much as possible from my home-office...and scheduling running around so that I can complete multiple tasks in one circuit. At home, use plenty of natural breeze and light and use cfl when artificial lighting is needed. Segregate garbage to a large extent...Not much really, but yr post made me feel that serious introspection is called for. What else do you suggestcan be done?
Here are ten things can be done depending on your comfort factor (and budget):
a. As you have mentioned, optimizing on travel would be a significant saving
b. Conversion of incandescent bulbs to CFL (or the very latest LED-based lighting) is a great way to save energy
c. An electric car or two-wheeler is clean and non-polluting (a hybrid car, if you have the budget for it, would be great!)
d. Switching off electrical appliances when not in use does save a lot of energy (ie., not the stand-by mode, but the switch-off mode)
e. Use the washing machine only when you have a full load saves both power and water
f. If you have a well, ensuring that it is recharged with rainwater (instead of letting the rainwater flow away) is a good practice
g. Recycle whatever can be recycled
h. In heavy-duty Indian cooking (such boiling rice), a thermal cooker saves up to 30-40% energy (a thermal cooker is an insulated container to which partially cooked rice is transferred. The rest of the cooking takes place with the heat contained in the vessel that the container preserves)
i. An LCD monitor for your computer is far more energy efficient than a CRT monitor
j. Maintain your fridge & air-conditioner at the highest temperatures rather than the lowest
Most of the suggestions are practiced normally but I must remember to power down all systems unless I am working on them - only lcd monitors around my workplace.
Thanks to 'amma' RWH is now mandatory in TN - but we installed them in all the houses we've lived in despite raised eyebrows from our houseowners...
I use a steam cooker for rice and some veg and pressure cook dal etc. Haven't come across thermal cookers though.
Need to find out if the battery pack can be removed from the scooter and hauled up 2 floors to plug in...apt blocks this way are not friendly towards electric vehicles.
i am really impressed, this is interesting, i would suggest next thing would be to eat local grown food, that reduces a lot of carbon footprint, car pool, are other things too ...but i would definitely like to see the biogas plant working...that is interesting
Interestingly, installing the biogas plant has changed our shopping behavior...now I buy less oranges (peel too acidic for the digester) and more watermelon and musk-melon (lots of rind).
A really interesting thing happened late night on Saturday. We got a call from Sumathi, our maid--could she bring over, on Sunday morning (her holiday and her church day), 5 kg of spoiled tomatoes from the grocer's store next to her home for the digester?
Sunday morning, 8 pm, she was home with the tomato waste, which was promptly eaten up by the digester. This morning, the digester was full of gas and Sumathi very proudly told me this afternoon that the entire cooking for the day was done on the biogas stove...:-)
For me, this is the same warm-fuzzy-feeling that I get when I use Ubuntu (which is all the time now). In fact, I run Windows on top of Ubuntu (using VirtualBox) when I have to, and even such heavyweight programs as Adobe InDesign works perfectly. I hope I'd never have to boot into Windows again...!
Back to the biogas plant. My Significant Other (SO), who came visiting last week, was of the opinion that we should try and rope in the Kudumbasree domestic waste collectors (who, like Exnora, collect household waste) to dump the neighborhood waste into the digester and save some work!
Really good going!
How much sludge has been generated so far? There are reports from small communities here where the women have taken up composting using earthworms.Do you have to vermicompost the sludge from the digester or can it be used directly in yr kitche garden?
Slurry takes about a month to form at first and is then available continuously at the rate of about a liter a day.
It is apparently such a potent manure that it has to be diluted 1:5 before applying to small plants.
Seems to me that Kerala is the right place where working from home using the net - chat and skype (or equivalent) esp where physical presence is not absolutely required - should be pioneered. The frequent bandhs/hartals (e.g. today as you wrote) could be used to push towards this. Might as well work towards earning easy some carbon credits as it ensures people do not travel unnecessarily.
Never seen such fat peas before!
With MOO's gentle push, actually managed to make it to the local organic farmers' veg shop and found a collection of winter veg like cauli, cabbage, beans and fat peas. Rather expensive - perhaps twice as expensive compared to prices in the usual shop where I buy. Hopefully as more people go in for this, prices will drop. Evidently quite popular with a bunch of regulars - if you phone and inform them, they keep your requirements aside...definitely hope to visit more often.
I think I should consider converting my home to a museum of ecologically sound living practices (considering that my SO visits once a month, my son is moving out in 3 months, and that two dogs and I are all that remains--lot of bandwidth for visitors !!).
Waiting for my kitchen garden to develop to full strength...
So as soon as the kitchen garden reaches full strength, what you need to do is have a veg fest every month or two - okra day in march, brinjal day in may etc - and 'increase bandwidth' by calling in like-minded ecologists who enjoy creative cooking to help pick, process and consume the produce...
this is interesting kitchen garden, I am sure soon you will have a self sufficient kitchen (gas can be biogas, vegetables from the garden...), i am sure you can run an organic kitchen soon, and get people to visit. Actually people can work on your kitchen garden, rather than the farm...
Now that the digester eats anything organic, what about the birds and beasts in your garden that depended on scattered food? Are their scrounging patterns also changing like your shopping patterns?
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