Solar Power

Should diesel gensets be allowed to run in residential areas in summers?

The authorities concerned are trying their level best to make the surrounding pollution-free. But, it takes two to cooperate. Diesel generators are being widely being used which add to not only air pollution but also noise pollution. Diesel generators should not be allowed on regular basis. The electric load in the streets leads to power cuts, which further results in sparking. Rather than using diesel generator, it will be more efficient and effective to use inverters which in return will reduce sound and air pollution. Further, the electric load would also lessen. So, it is advisable to use diesel generator occasionally.

Deepanshi Passi

Health ailments rise

Noise pollution levels can be controlled only when there will be a proper division of residential and factory site areas. Heavy generators are being used in factory premises and in big shops situated within residential areas due to which people suffers a lot. It leads to sleep disturbances, hearing impairment, heart diseases etc.

Miyush Trehan

Install solar-powered inverters

Diesel generators are set in villages as power backup source during power cuts. Apart from contributing to air pollution, the noise emanating from these generators affect the nervous health. Solar power inverters, which are effective and beneficial during the summer, should be installed in villages. It may cost a more but would turn out to be an excellent investment. In this way, the villagers would get electricity and there will be check on the pollution too.

Amarpreet Kaur

Be a responsible citizen

Among other types of pollution in the country, air pollution is considered to be the most dangerous problem even worse than the problem of tobacco. The biggest contributors of air pollution are vehicles, industrial emissions, thermal power plants, construction dust, waste burning and millions of poor households which are bound to use cheap and dirty fuels such as wood and cow dung for cooking. The other prominent source to generate air pollution are generators which are used in the summers in the time of power cuts. These generators must be banned and other sources of energy such as solar, thermal and wind may be put in use. There may be so many diseases which are due to air pollution such as infection, respiratory problems, chronic obstructive lung disease, heart attack, stroke, and diabetes and lung cancer. We should reduce the number of trips in our cars, eliminate wood fire and use of stoves. Above all, we all must cooperate with the local government to curb the problem of air pollution banning generators and by planting more and more trees in our surroundings.

Farzana Khan

Cutrail power cuts

Emissions from the diesel generator sets can be very harmful both to the body and environment. They can cause cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases apart from causing a lot of air, water and soil pollution. Realising the gravity of the situation and keeping in view that the diesel is one of the largest contributors to the problem of environmental pollution, the government should ban their use even for few hours in a day in summers. To tackle the problem of power cuts in various cities, residents should go only for the electric or solar inverters. Neither they will cause any pollution nor prove to be very expensive. The authorities concerned should also not lag behind in curtailing the power cuts during hot and sultry days.

Dr Sunil Chopra

Ban generators in residential areas

Air pollution is one of the deadliest pollutions and our government is trying in every possible way to control it. Main duty to control the air pollution lies in our hands. Mainly in summers, when hot waves and air conditioning is in full swing, it is very hard to control the air pollution level. In summers, power cuts are normal due to high consumption of electricity. But, today’s generation can’t live without ACs. Use of generators is the main cause of air pollution in the months of April to September. The government should ban the use of generators during summers in residential areas. In industries, it is hard to ban. But in residential areas, generators should be completely banned. Culprits should be heavily fined. And we should try to live in our houses without ACs and tell the children about the harmful effects of using both the AC’s and generators.

Ritu Priya

Regulate use of diesel generator sets

It is true that the diesel generator sets pollute the environment, especially during the summer season when long power cuts are imposed. The generators are not only the cause of environmental pollution, but also noise pollution. There must be a check on the usage of these gen sets. A blanket ban is not possible but its usage can be regulated by setting norms for noise level and emitting of smoke etc. At any cost these should not be allowed in the streets. A proper place on the roof top can be used to keep the generators. The people using these gen sets must get these serviced from time to time. The inverters can be used in case of low consumption.

Bir Devinder Singh Bedi

Install soundless, smokeless generators

Air pollution creates various health problems such as asthma, lung congestion and other respiratory ailments. One of the main sources of air pollution are generators which are used when there is a cut in the supply of electricity. On the one hand these generators cause air pollution and on the other they also create noise pollution. The local government should put a ban on the use of generators and these must be replaced with soundless and smokeless generators. It must be mandatory to use solar panels so that in the time of power cut these panels may be put in use. Each factory must follow the rules and regulations of the NGT board. Those factories which are producing smoke by using generators must be banned. That firm which is running on coal or other fuel such as wood may not be allowed to operate we may also use wind and gobar gas plants to generate power.

Dr Mohd Saleem Farooqui

PSPCL must ensure uninterrupted supply

To curb the menace, the simple solution is that these generator sets for production of electricity should not allowed to operate during summer. In that case, all households in the city should be supplied with uninterrupted electricity by the PSPCL. If power supply is not maintained by the PSPCL, the public will suffer. Another alternative is that all households spend money individually on installation of solar power supply system and use electricity according to their own requirements. Solar power installation is not very expensive, though the poor will not be able to spare the needed resources for its installation and will suffer due to shortage of electricity supply. Install more solar supply systems in the state and ensure electricity supply to save people from air pollution.

Gautam Dev

OPEN HOUSE COMMENT
Check violations, impose penalties on polluters
Shivani Bhakoo

There is no proper check on noise and air pollution generated by the diesel-run generators. The problem of pollution rises during the summer season, when residents face the power cuts or get interrupted power supply due to excessive load.

The Punjab Pollution Control Board should keep a check on the violations and heavy penalties should be levied on violators for causing pollution in residential areas.

Besides, people should be encouraged to use power backups based on solar power energy.

The authorities concerned may be trying hard to curb the pollution levels but there is absolutely no check on diesel generator sets running in residential areas, which cause health hazards to many.

OPEN HOUSE QUESTION

Underage driving in city is rampant. Many precious lives are lost due to this. What should be expected from the authorities and parents so that lives can be saved? ludhiana.feedback@gmail.com

Large-scale solar power generation is once again a hot issue in Hartford, after the Connecticut Siting Council recently approved a solar project in East Windsor that, when completed, will become the biggest installation in the state.

The Gravel Pit Solar will sit on 485 acres of land that includes former sand and gravel pits and tobacco fields, according to Meaghan Wims, a spokeswoman for D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, the New York-based company behind the project. The project was approved on March 1.

Construction of the solar farm, which is adjacent to a landfill, industrial buildings, other gravel pits and two smaller solar projects, is expected to start as early as next summer, Wims said, with solar panel installations likely to begin in spring 2022. Gravel Pit Solar will begin producing 120 megawatts of power in late 2022.

Gravel Pit Solar has power-purchase agreements with United Illuminating and Eversource Energy, which will buy 20 megawatts of the total amount of electricity the plant will produce, according to Wims.

The project was also selected by Rhode Island officials for renewable energy generation, she said, and has utilities under contract to purchase 50 megawatts. Municipal light and power departments in Rhode Island and Massachusetts will buy the remaining 50 megawatts.

Still, even when it’s completed, nobody will ever mistake Connecticut for any of the states in the southwestern United States, where acres and acres of solar panels silently soak up the sun.

Depending upon who you talk to, the state is either moving ahead too fast or too slow in permitting solar projects.

“The goals that DEEP has set for commercial solar aren’t any higher than they have been over the past couple years,” said Mike Trahan, executive director of the trade group Solar Connecticut. “The state handicaps and puts handcuffs on the growth of commercial solar.”

But there is clear and persistent opposition to large solar projects. There are a half a dozen pieces of legislation before the legislative committee of Connecticut General Assembly that seek to limit the growth of large-scale solar projects in the state, according to Trahan.

State Rep. Mary Mushinky, D-Wallingford, a member of the legislature’s Environment Committee, said Connecticut lawmakers need to send a message to developers of major solar projects.

“The developer here goes where the land is flat and the price is cheap,” said Mushinsky, who is a long-time champion of the environment.

Germany, Mushinsky said, is country that gets solar right. “They have financial disincentives for developing solar on pristine land and incentives for putting panels on parking lot canopies, on buildings and in blighted urban areas,” she said. “What’s lacking here is that we don’t send out any kind of price signals at all to [developers].”

Melanie Bachman, executive director of the Connecticut Siting Council, said East Windsor officials were supportive of Gravel Pit Solar because of problems with off-road vehicles on part of the property.

“They felt that the fencing the project will have around it will put an end to that problem,” Bachman said. The Council is responsible for overseeing the siting of power facilities, transmission lines, hazardous waste facilities and other forms of infrastructure, including telecommunications sites.

When another project by D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments — the 130-acre, 100,000-panel Tobacco Valley Solar project in Simsbury, which started operating in 2019 — was proposed more than three years earlier, it was met with plenty of opposition by local residents.

The Tobacco Valley project is now producing about $600,000 a year in additional tax revenue over the full operating life of the solar array.

State Senator Norman Needleman, D-Essex, a co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Energy and Technology committee, said “there has always been a very dynamic tension between the environmental and agricultural communities over this.”

“I’m always on the fence on this,” Needleman said. “I think we should always be doing more to promote renewable energy. The problem is our [hilly] topography and woods. I’m reluctant to promote the cutting down of trees to build a solar farm.”

Mushinsky said Connecticut is a densely-populated state with little open space. “We should be very careful how we lay out things,” she said.

And in the suburbs, yards filled with solar panels can cause squabbles between neighbors. Karen Zarkades, of Cheshire, said her cousins in Massachusetts live next door to a yard full of panels. “It’s not a happy situation,” she said.

Trahan, the executive director of Solar Connecticut, said the lawmakers’ fears are short-sighted.

“Who is the state of Connecticut to tell a private landowner who they can sell their land to?” Trahan said. “For a farmer who is facing bankruptcy, why should the state stand in the way if they want to put some or all of their land on the market to a solar developer?”

More large solar projects, Trahan said, would help provide Connecticut with a more secure energy future.

“We don’t have oil like Texas or natural gas like West Virginia,” Trahan said. “This can help make us energy independent. We don’t need a [power] line from Quebec to bring hydropower to us at great expense. We can do it all here.”

Some communities, like Wallingford and Cheshire in New Haven County and Bridgeport in Fairfield County, have solar arrays on top of former landfills.

Joel Gordes, a West Hartford-based energy consultant, said having solar energy projects is important because it makes it less likely that foreign terrorists, or anyone else trying to shut down the nation’s energy sources, will be able to do so.

“I am wary of too much wind, because you have transmission line that you need in order to bring it to shore that could be tampered with,” Gordes said. “Solar can be installed in smaller amounts with arrays all over the state.”