The kitchen complex of the Shirdi ashram has 73 parabolic dishes to capture the sun’s rays.
India’s pilgrim centres, industries, learning centres and other
institutions are increasingly looking to the sky for tapping solar
energy for their kitchens that cater to thousands on a day-to-day basis.
A look at the green move by M.A. Siraj
India has a large number of pilgrim centres that attract visitors from
across the globe all round the year. It is a tradition that these
centres, with large community kitchens, cater to the visiting clientele
with variety food. Green sensibilities have entered these kitchens too,
as they are tapping solar energy and slowly shedding the old
energy-guzzling ways of cooking. A lot of industrial and commercial
canteens are getting rid of their old ways of polluting the environment
and have installed solar cooking systems.
The Saibaba Ashram at Shirdi in Maharashtra commissioned its giant solar
cooking system in 2009. The kitchen complex of the Ashram has 73
parabolic dishes to capture the sun’s rays to run what is touted as the
world’s largest solar cooking system to cook food for 50,000 devotees
daily.
The system taps the sun’s rays to generate 3,600 kg of steam daily and
saves nearly 100,000 kg of cooking gas annually. The system cost the
Ashram Rs. 1.3 crore. Of this the Central Government’s non-renewable
energy sector provided a Rs. 58 lakh as subsidy.
Steam cooking is clean, efficient and hygienic, especially when food is
cooked for large numbers. The dish antennas concentrate solar rays on a
giant reflector which transfers the heat to generate steam with
temperature ranging between 550 and 600 degrees Celsius. With an
automated sun tracking system, the dishes rotate continuously along with
the movement of the sun, always concentrating the solar rays on the
receivers. However, the dishes have to be manually rotated back each
evening to the east in line with the rising sun for the next morning. As
the solar system is hooked up with boilers, it can take care of a few
non-sunshine hours too. But a back-up is needed for prolonged spell of
rainy and cloudy days.
Emission reduction credits
At the solar-operated Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam kitchen at Tirupati
where food is cooked daily for 15,000 pilgrims, the system installed in
2002 atop the shrine’s ‘Nitya Annadanam Canteen’ has adopted the solar
cooking technology to drastically cut down on diesel fuel it was using
till then.
The temple now sells the emission reduction credits it earns to a Swiss
green energy technology investor firm, Good Energies Inc.
It not only takes care of energy and ecology but is also a source of
revenue for the temple. The shrine now saves Rs. 17 lakh per annum. The
system reduces the carbon dioxide emission by 1.2 tonnes per day.
The system, costing Rs. 1.1 crore, had its managing body, the Tirumala
Tirupati Devasthanam Board, contributing half the amount while another
half came as a subsidy from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
The solar cooking system in both these shrines was installed by Gadhia
Solar Energy Systems (GSES), a Gujarat-based company.
The initiative
Gadhia Solar was set up by entrepreneur Deepak Gadhia who brought the
parabolic dishes-based solar concentrators (developed by Austrian
scientist Wolfgang Scheffler) and began manufacturing solar cookers at
his unit at Valsad near Mumbai.
The ingenuity behind the work was identified by Rajiv Gandhi while on a
visit to Germany in 1984 when Gadhia was working on heat recovery and
water harvesting system in a German University.
Responding to the invitation of the Indian Investment Office under the then PMO, Gadhia and team settled down in India.
For industrial canteens
While mass cooking facilities at several shrines gave them a big break,
they also set up such facilities for industrial canteens at IBM,
Bangalore; Sanghi Industries, Hyderabad; Pricol Industries, Coimbatore;
and public sector companies such as GACL and GSFC and also at several
residential schools, Defence establishments and hospitals.
Says Gadhia, “ Temples were more open to idea of using heavenly energy
for cooking, as they also had large numbers coming in for prasad. These systems are more viable there. But once the systems were installed, we soon moved on to other target groups.”
These cooking/heating facilities show the way India should go in tapping
new energy sources as the country’s current installed capacity of
147,458 MW is still eight per cent short of the demand of power.
Demand growing
Energy expert A. Ravindra says demand is growing by eight per cent
annually and conventional fuels are getting exhausted. It was only in
2008 that investments in the renewable energy sector in India exceeded
those in the fossil fuel sector.
Following the lead of the shrine at Tirumala, the Brahmakumari
Instituteat Abu Road in Rajasthan installed a solar cooking system to
cook food for 10,000 persons daily in 2005.
Rishi Valley Residential School at Madanapalle, 220 km east of
Bangalore, has also installed a solar cooking system for its kitchen
which prepares food for 500 inmate-students.
The School’s Dining Manager Harindran says the system serves them for
300 sunny days and saves them nearly Rs. 2 lakh annually on cooking gas.
The Art of Living Foundation in Bangalore is also generating power
through biogas plants and recycling the wastewater within their
premises.
Other applications
Gadhia’s company has developed several applications for solar
concentrators (besides cooking) such as for wastewater evaporation,
air-conditioning, desalination, heating and cooling, solar incinerators
for bio-medical waste for hospitals, solar crematoriums, solar driers
etc. Solar systems for housing colonies and blocks are amenable to
multi-tasking and can be used for heating water for bathing, for
preparing drinking water (pasteurisation), desalination, steam cooking,
air-conditioning and for power generation with micro-turbines.
“By doing such projects we reduce the cost of products for individuals.
It is similar to having a central TV antenna instead of every household
having its own antenna.
It reduces the cost and improves the efficiency and optimises the use of systems,” observes Deepak Gadhia.
The possibilities
India is blessed with abundant sunshine which offers ample opportunity
to tap solar energy for the country’s growing needs. It is estimated
that if solar panels were installed on only four per cent area of Thar
desert in Rajasthan, India can generate power to the tune of 100,000 MW,
about two-thirds of its present installed capacity. Thar desert sprawls
over an area of nearly 200,000 sq. km.
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