Pan Global
Corporation, a renewable energy technology and infrastructure company, recently
announced that its first acquisition candidate, the Project Badyar small
hydro-electric station, is nearly a month away from completion of construction.
This will be the first of many projects that will allow Pan Global to
participate in India’s strong demand for renewable energy technologies.
Project Badyar is
based in the state of Uttarakhand, in which over the past decade alone, demand
for electric power consumption increased by over five times. About 30% of that
demand is due to the consumer sector and experiencing growth due to a rising
middle class, but over 40% of that demand is from industry. If you look at that
state in the early 2000’s, over 40% of the population was primarily working
poor, mainly in the agricultural sector. However, Uttarakhand always had a very
high literacy rate in excess of 76% of the population. So, combine low-cost,
highly literate labor with attractive tax incentives offered through the State
Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand Limited, and the result is
explosive industrial growth. Some incentives structured were on the level of
100% income tax exemption for the first five years, and 30% the next five, and
so forth. In no time, sugar cane and rice paddy fields gave way to industrial
parks and prefabricated buildings, and manufacturers such as Tata Motors, Bajaj
Auto, Nestle, Hewlett-Packard, and many others began to dominate the plains
areas of Uttarkhand.
Uttarkhand is also a
state that suffered from the ravages of climate change-enhanced extreme weather
phenomena. In June of last year, the area experienced a rainfall that was
heavier by 375% above the benchmark of an average monsoon season. Combined with
accelerated glacial melt, this led to the worse flashflood in 90 years, leading
to washed-out roads and bridges, major mudslides, and presumably 5,700 people
dead. Environmentalists blamed the national road building program which led to
routes constructed in remote areas without any adequate drainage. Many more
environmentalists also blamed the rash construction of very large scale
hydro-electric projects that involved building major dams as contributing to
the disaster by weakening river banks. Large scale hydroelectric power stations
typically involve building a dam which interrupts the flow of a river and can
cause significant harm to a local ecosystem, and often displace people and
wildlife. Small hydroelectric power plants on the other hand have a very low
environmental impact and are ideal for small communities. This is one of the
reasons why the Alliance for Rural Electrification expects the small
hydro-electric market, meaning power stations that produce less than 10
Megawatts, to grow from a $14 billion market back in 2008 to a $38.5 billion
market by 2015.
Uttarkhand is itself
divided up into 13 districts. Project Badyar is located in the northern most
district of Uttarkashi among the foothills of the Himalayan mountain range.
There is little manufacturing industry in this district, but as both the Ganges
and Yamuna rivers originate in this district, tourism and resorts are a major
contributor to the local economy as well as agriculture and forest products.
The region has a population over 329,000 putting it on par with the population
of the Central American nation, Belize. The annual power output of Project
Badyar is expected to be about 27,500 Megawatt hours, which is enough to power
100,000 Indian households in that region.
Not using a large
dam to create a massive reservoir of water, water is collected at Project
Badyar using what is called a trench weir. Essentially a trench is built across
a stream effectively below the bed level of the stream so as not to cause any
major obstructions that can impact the ecosystem. The top of the weir is
covered with bottom rack bars. Water while flowing over it, passes through the
bottom racks and enters into the trench and collected in an intake well located
at one of the banks at the end of the weir. The bottom racks consists of heavy
rounded steel bars placed parallel to the river flow and prevent heavy boulders
and pebbles from entering into the water to be channeled to the power station.
The water then flows
into a large desilting tank which basically just uses gravity to let the
heavier sediment fall out of the water, otherwise abrasive material in the
water would quickly wear out the turbine blades which are rotated to generate
power. The water is transported to the power station among a system of pipes
referred to as the conveyance line, and is laid out among the contours of the
mountains such as not to disturb the local landscape. The water then flows into
a sizable forebay tank which regulates the flow before entering a narrower line
of piping referred to as the penstock which is placed at a very steep angle to
increase water velocity and pressure before hitting turbines in the powerhouse
of the electric generation station. Upon leaving the powerhouse, the water is
returned to the river via an artificially built canal like structure known as a
tail race. As the water is used and not consumed, you have a truly renewable
energy source.
Hilly areas like
those in Uttarkashi where you have streams of water rushing down narrow
steep-sided valleys are ideal for what are referred to as ‘run of river’ type
of small scale hydro-electric plants and are the least environmentally
damaging. The power generated is expected to go to a local switchyard to a
nearby substation and then into the local grid.
Pan Global
Corporation also plans to enter the geothermal energy market as well as the
solar power markets in India. Over two-thirds of India’s power comes from
burning coal, and although India has a large coal mining industry, they only
meet 72% of their coal needs, meaning the rest has to be imported from
Australia and Indonesia. This has resulted in coal prices tripling over the
past three years. On top of that, the heavy usage of fossil fuels has managed
to put India on par with China in terms of having the world’s worse air
quality. Combine those facts with the need to cut the carbon foot print to
attempt to mitigate global warming/climate change, has motivated India’s Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh to set aggressive targets to shift off of fossil fuels
and to up the country’s target of photovoltaic electricity production capacity
by 30% for 2014. Pan Global is definitely in the right place at the right time.
For more information
on the company, visit www.panglobalcorp.com
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