Mobilising Mysore students for doing household energy audit in their neighbourhood during weekends is a good idea. But how do we make it happen? Or as Dr Bhamy Shenoy put it, who will bell the cat?
The Green entrepreneur
Ashwin has offered to draft a project paper; and also conduct a pilot programme to give us a sense of its working - 'I know of a school (Vidyavardhaka, Kuvempunagar) which has many eco-conscious teachers'. He proposes to persude them to adopt energy audit procedure as part of extra-curricular activity of their students.
According to Ashwin, getting students to do energy audit in their own houses as a class project would would help us take the energy audit scheme forward.With a bit of publicity we could persuade more schools to adopt the programme.Rotary Schools and Kendriya Vidyalalya appear suitable candidates
Naveen, who has worked on projects involving students in his locality -
Laughing Waters - suggests we focus on pre-defined areas,to start with, for tangible results. He has in mind apartment blocks, where kids can be put to work on collecting data on energy usage/wastage in apartments and the common areas in their residential complex.
A closer look at the use of household appliances - TV, washing machine/drier, water for bath/flushng,light bulbs - would help in drawing up a checklist for a comprehensive energy audit. Here is a link to a piece on
energy saving tips.
Dr Shenoy reckons a household energy audit project ought to be promoted by Chesco. In the US,he says,the power supply companies are mandated to support such initiative. Dr.Shenoy says we can count on help and guidance from an expert in energy audit and BARC scientist,Dr D V Gopinath.
