Project Management

The demand for energy doubles every 14 years and is taken as one of the indicators of development of a country. India, with 16% of the world's population consumes only 1.5% of the total energy produced in the world, in comparison of USA which has 6.25 of the world's population and utilizes 33% of the energy produced. This gives us an idea of the low level of our development and should be an incentive for better utilization of our resources for generating more energy, so that we can meet our growing demands of energy. Even today, about 80% of our population continues to depend on fuel wood, dung and agricultural wastes. We know that non-renewable sources of energy such as fossil fuels, coal and petroleum, are not going to last for long. Forests are also being depleted at a fast rate due to indiscriminate felling of trees. It has become, therefore, necessary to think alternative, non-conventional sources o energy. Some of these sources of energy are discussed here.

The energy we get today from the fossil fuels like coal, is in reality sun's energy, trapped in plants millions of years ago. Plants make their food and grow by using solar energy for photosynthesis. Millions of years ago, huge forests got buried in the earth's crust and they got transformed into coal and oil under great pressure and temperature into coal and oil. Accordingly coal and oil are called fossil fuels.

Wind Energy

Like solar energy, wind flow can also be harnessed to obtain mechanical energy for lifting water from wells or from rivers. Once the windmill is turning due to force of the wind, it may as well run a generator to get electrical energy. In the coastal and hilly regions, where wind blows at high speed, a wind mill can be used for generating electricity for a small town. Windmills have been used since long in many countries, but in India they have only been recently introduced.