Latest news with #SELCO
Deccan Herald
3 days ago
- Climate
- Deccan Herald
Heavy rain resumes in pockets of North Karnataka; 196 students stranded in Navalgund school rescued
Bengaluru: As many as 196 students of school on the outskirts of Navalgund town, Dharwad district were rescued after being stranded for over four hours following the flooding triggered by heavy rain and overflowing of a stream on students of Hurakadli Ajja School remained in school with the Ambali Halla stream flowing in full steam. The taluk administration arranged for buses and other vehicles to ferry the students back home, after the floodwater receded after 8 pm, Navalgund Tahsildar Sudheer Sahukar told downpour lashed Navalgund and parts of taluk including Gudisagar, Naganuru, Alagawadi and Amargol, on Monday afternoon. Overflowing streams had cut-off traffic on Ibrahimpur road and the road linking Ron. Two-hour long rain, coupled with gusty winds, flooded vast tracts of farmland and brought down several trees and electricity poles in the a week-long break, rains resumed in many parts of north and central Karnataka on Monday. Two people died and several injured in rain-related incidents in north Karnataka region. Sangeeta Balasaheb Patil (30) died after a portion of her house ceiling collapsed at Baba Nagar in Tikota taluk of Vijayapura district in the wee hours of Monday. Sangeeta's husband and their children have escaped unhurt in the incident. Several parts of Vijayapura district, including Tikota, experienced heavy showers on the intervening night of Sunday and SELCO poised for a hat-trick of Green Vijayanagara district, a 25-year-old farmer was struck dead by lightning at his farm at Dashamapur village in Hagaribommanahalli taluk late Sunday night. Chandrashekar had gone to the farm on Sunday night to protect the sown maize seeds from wild boar elderly woman, Hanumakka, suffered injuries in a wall collapse at Badeladaku village in Kudligi taluk. She is admitted in a hospital in Ballari. Crops on vast tracts of agricultural land in Kottur taluk have been damaged due to flash floods triggered by heavy overnight rain. Four houses in the taluk were completely damaged. Road link to several villages, including Chiribi, Alaburu and Kogali Kannihalli, has been cut off due to overflowing rivulets and Hagari river. The copious rain in the taluk has set in motion the farming rain that lashed Hosapete for over half-an-hour has left the roads and low-lying areas flooded. Sharp rain had turned the playgrounds in the town into lakes. Ballari district, including the district headquarter, received good overnight of Bidar, Kalaburagi and Koppal received intermittent spells of rain on town and parts of taluk recorded moderate to heavy rain on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday. Kodagu district is expected to receive heavy rain for June 12 and 13. The IMD has declared red alert for the hilly district on Thursday and Friday. The NDRF team on Monday visited Harangi reservoir and Kushalnagar and inspected the flood-prone areas.
Scroll.in
19-05-2025
- Health
- Scroll.in
‘There is no darkness now': Solar power helps India's health centres bridge infrastructure gap
Dr Gnaneshwar no longer thinks twice about flipping on light switches, using the computer or getting print outs at the Yelheri primary health centre in Karnataka's Yadgir district. Up until 2022, the primary health centre at which Gnaneshwar is the medical officer had only erratic electricity supply. It had to rely on a power back-up system that would run out in hours. Power cuts meant performing operations by torch or candlelight, baby warmers not working smoothly and no proper cooling for medicines or vaccines. That changed three-and-a-half years ago. The installation of a solar energy system brought continuous power supply to the health centre – and immense relief. In addition, the staff living nearby do not have to sweat it out, particularly at night. 'Now the laboratory and the storage facilities run seamlessly and even patients are happier,' said Gnaneshwar. 'There is no darkness now.' The problems that the Yelheri centre dealt with before solar power are still faced by most primary health centres across India. Some of them are even in need of basics such as water supply. Yelheri is one of the 2,500 Karnataka government health facilities to be powered by solar energy, said Huda Jaffer, director of the SELCO Foundation, a social enterprise based in Bengaluru. Karnataka's Saurya Swasthya or'solar for health' initiative was launched with the SELCO Foundation in November 2024 with the aim of powering 5,000 health centres. The state has 12,000 health centres, including primary health centres and sub-health centres. As of 2024, SELCO had helped set up power systems in 8,000 health centres across India. The target for 2025 is to increase this to 10,000 centres and over 25,000 by 2027, Jaffer said. Across India, solar power is helping rural health care centres overcome a huge infrastructure gap. As a factsheet by the Power For All initiative explains, rural health centres provide crucial 'last-mile medical services such as immunisation, child deliveries and neonatal care, all of which cannot be delivered without regular electricity supply'. In remote regions, solar power is a gamechanger. Lalengliani Khawlhring, a pharmacist at Hlimen Urban Primary Health Centre in Mizoram's Aizawl Municipal Council, had joined the centre in 2015 when it did not have constant power supply. Since 2024, when a solar power system was installed, the freezers in the medicine store room have operated smoothly. Vaccines must be stored at a specific temperature or else they spoil. 'I am no longer tense now about medicines and vaccines,' Khawlhring said in a conversation in April. Solar not only provides power but also climate resilience to vulnerable communities, especially in states like Odisha, that are prone to extreme events and disasters, said Jaffer. In Odisha, frequent cyclones risk destroying power lines, which leaves solar as a decentralised and reliable source of power during such instances. In remote, rural areas, solar often becomes the only energy source. Solar-powered healthcare, however, remains a philanthropic initiative, with the support of corporate social responsibility funds. In Karnataka, for instance, the state government and SELCO Foundation have been prime movers with substantial grants from the IKEA Foundation and the Waverly Street Foundation. Powering healthcare Nearly 97% of Indian households are electrified, according to a 2020 study by the thinktank Council on Energy, Environment and Water. However, access to power for primary health centres is lower: a 2019 study by the thinktank showed that though 91% of primary health centres had electricity connections in 2012-'13, power supply was irregular for nearly half. The health ministry's Rural Health Statistics 2021-'22 said that 3.7% of 24,935 rural primary health centres and 11.4% of 1,57,935 rural sub health centres did not have power supply. Years before Karnataka's solar push, Chhattisgarh had begun tapping solar energy for health infrastructure. Up until 2006, one in every three primary health centres in Chhattisgarh did not have power or suffered due to erratic supply. As of 2023 however, nearly all of the state's 800 primary health centres and most district hospitals and community health centres are powered by solar energy, according to Jain. In a conversation in April, Sanjeev Jain, sustainable energy consultant and former chief engineer with the Chhattisgarh State Renewable Energy Development Agency, said, 'We were energy security experts and not medical experts but we found that there was increased footfall of patients and staff was retained due to better facilities.' A typical primary health centre has a mean daily electricity requirement of around 45.8 kWh or kilowatt hours. A solar system of 5 kWp capacity – kilowatt peak measures solar photo voltaic output – can meet 70% of its peak demand. The Chhattisgarh State Renewable Energy Development Agency deployed 2 kWp solar systems to augment electricity supply at the primary health centres. According to Power For All, Chhattisgarh's solar energy initiative helped improve healthcare services for 80,000 patients per day and saved up to 80% energy costs for the health centres. Jain said the next target is to install solar power in about 5,000 sub-health centres in Chhattisgarh, with support from the health ministry. Smaller states in the North East, like Mizoram, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Karnataka in south India have been trendsetters in powering health centres with solar electricity. In Meghalaya, all health centres use solar power while in Mizoram, 60% of health centres run on solar electricity. Ninety per cent of Tripura's primary health centres run on solar power. States such as West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are working on similar programmes. Even so, the share of solar power production in India is 5.20% while coal remains a major source of power at 74%. Solar troubleshooting Apart from installing solar systems, independent research organisations such as the World Resources Institute India help nonprofits conduct energy audits and integrate energy efficiency and clean energy measures in their health centres. Audits are crucial to assess the energy needs of the centres, say Lanvin Concessao and Rishikesh Mishra of World Resources Institute, India, which has helped set up solar power connections for 35 charity-run hospitals in rural India. 'The audits also tell us about the energy efficiency of their present medical and non-medical appliances used in the hospitals or centres and on how the solar system should be designed,' said Mishra. Setting up solar and battery storage involved a lot of ground work in the form of designing energy systems and capacity building, and training staff on the specifics of energy installation. Often, the remote monitoring systems do not work due to bad internet connectivity or software problems, said Concessao. Concessao said there is a strong push for solar in the Indian Public Health Standards, 2022, and the National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health. This has made budgetary allocations possible for solar systems to be built and maintained, backing research and development practitioners and building awareness. SELCO's Jaffer said the aim is not only solar power systems but more efficient medical technology and better health facilities that factor in heat stress and use power efficiently. The Centre's Surya Mitra programme includes training for Arogya Raksha Samitis or health committees at the village level to understand solar systems and skill training for the youth in solar systems. Other than installation costs and maintenance, as always with solar energy, there are challenges of using batteries and disposing of them. Most solar systems rely on lead acid batteries but lithium ion is slowly gaining popularity. In Chhattisgarh, Jain said all new systems are using lithium ion which can last for 10 years. Meena Menon is a freelance journalist and a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds.
Indian Express
03-05-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Fancy tech solutions are fine, but they need to solve real-world problems: Harish Hande, co-founder, SELCO
Harish Hande is a pioneering social entrepreneur and co-founder of Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO), a social energy enterprise delivering sustainable energy solutions for the poor. He has worked with rural artisans and entrepreneurs to understand their challenges and provide cost-effective and workable tech solutions. Harish was the recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2011 for his pragmatic efforts to put solar power technology in the hands of the poor. He is also the winner of the Ashden Awards and Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation. Harish holds a bachelor's degree in energy engineering from IIT Kharagpur and a master's degree and PhD in energy engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Harish spoke to on the need to talk about failures in an honest manner and learn from the same, the tech solutions relevant to the rural poor, and how AI might impact appropriate tech. Edited excerpts: Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your Impact Failure Conclave and learnings over the years. Harish Hande: You must understand that no one likes to speak of failures. One might think this is a facet in the corporate world, but it is prevalent in the impact sector, too. There is a lot of self-glorification. Maybe it is because there is that pressure to raise funds, or that funders might be keen that their impact is magnified. That is why we began this Impact Failure Conclave for an honest appraisal of what had gone wrong and how things could be changed. The first one was held in 2018, and later in 2022, and recently in 2025. It is an SELCO Foundation initiative. We in the impact sector speak of our achievements in glorified terms, and no one wants to rock the boat. Unless we speak of our failures, we will keep on trying to reinvent the wheel. We need to normalise the word failure, perhaps celebrate it and learn from it. Earlier, there was a lot of fear and hesitation among the participants, but now it has gone down. There is a lot more openness, and hopefully, there will be learnings for social enterprises and those in the impact sector to turn around. Venkatesh Kannaiah: You talk about the lack of clarity on problem statements and tech solutions that could solve these problems. Can you elaborate? Harish Hande: There is a dichotomy between needs and wants. The rural, frugal entrepreneur is looking at using tech to solve the problem of his needs, while the middle or upper-middle-class urban startup is looking at solving the problem of wants. It is looking at expendable income and for products to target the same. And many times, I feel that the technical solutions that we come up with are like saying that we could give you a typewriter in two years. You must understand that the world has moved on. We are siloed in our thinking, hence our tech innovations too are siloed. Today we are taking a solution and want to find a problem it could resolve. Take, for example, the case of solar water pumps for small farmers. We need to be clear about the problem we are trying to solve. The problem is water for irrigation, and the issue of cropping patterns, and usage of solar water pumps falls into that ambit. But nowadays, we forget the core problem we are looking to solve and get fascinated with tech, and start promoting solar water pumps, whether the situation demands the same or not. That is the issue. For instance, why do we need solar water pumps for sugarcane in dry areas of northern Karnataka? Can't we grow millets? Solar might be free, but water is expensive. Similar is the case with electric vehicles. The core problem we are trying to solve is transportation, but if you see the discourse around electric vehicles, one feels that it has been forgotten. We get so excited about a technology and forget about what it was supposed to solve. Then it would all lead to misplaced enthusiasm and the building of wrong incentive structures. So, with EVs, we are trying to put up a large number of charging stations. We need to articulate the problems we are planning to solve before we even jump to the technology. Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about some tech inventions/innovations in agriculture that did not work out and the reasons for the same. Harish Hande: Some of the tech failures in the impact sector start with funding. Funding organisations should get away from deliverable funding. Are you creating processes and platforms so that more innovations would emerge, or are you fixated on some number? That is the key question. And then it becomes a deliverables game, and the impact is lost. There is the example of milking machines. The machines that were made for milking desi cows did not work at all for milking water buffaloes in Assam. Now, one has to understand where and how this problem arises. Innovators should have a deep understanding of the requirements on the ground. It is not a one-size-fits-all. Now, apart from those building the tech, those who are implementing the tech on the ground also need to be sensitised. Finally, what it has led to is that dairy farmers feel that milking machines as tech is unreliable and does not work. There is the issue of cold storage. It works very differently for dry and wet ginger. Cold storage is good for dry ginger, not for wet ginger, and this point was completely ignored. This tech was introduced in various regions by the government and by the impact sector, and it has created a lot of avoidable confusion. The same is with cold storage for flowers. It depends a lot on where the cold storage is: is it at the point of sale, when it is transported, or at the location of plucking? We see tech as a stand-alone, say, like a television set that would work anywhere. But tech that has to do with livelihoods needs to be looked at from a different perspective. Let us look at simple tech like solar-powered sewing machines which were introduced in some areas and which led to more shirts being sewn per day. It is a good tech but introducing it in areas without working on enhancing the demand for shirts does not really help the person using the tech. Same is the case with, say, microgrids. We assume that since the tech is there it would be used the same way in all cases and situations. It is not the case. One builds payment schedules and patterns based on some assumptions, and when it does not work out, the tech has no takers, or it fails. Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you talk about inventions/innovations in medtech that failed to take off or did not have a substantial impact? Harish Hande: The first thing that comes to mind is vaccine refrigerators. There are so many design flaws in these products. Either it is too big, or too cumbersome, or too heavy. In resource-poor settings like rural India, managing it is a big hurdle. In most cases, the doors at these primary healthcare centers are small, so you need to demolish them to take the vaccine refrigerators in. Designers should understand resource-poor settings and build designs with empathy. There is always a one-size-fits-all mentality. Many of these are perhaps built according to WHO specifications, and do not take Indian conditions into account, and when different Indian conditions are encountered, designers and manufacturers do not go back to making improved or different versions. They have a take it or leave it attitude. Even simple things like chairs in dentist rooms are very cumbersome to manage in rural settings. It can neither be folded nor shifted easily. While the opportunity is for health at the doorstep, design flaws make it difficult for the benefits of such tech to reach the poor in rural areas. Why can't dentist chairs be foldable? Designers need to answer. Take the case of baby warmers. It consumes so much power that it is not a viable option in remote settings where decentralised solar is the only power source. In most of our products, we seem to be adding more and more sophistication to the features, but it puts a strain on resource-poor settings.. Venkatesh Kannaiah: SELCO is a pioneer in the solar energy space. What has changed over the years in terms of interest, innovations, funding, and how has it affected your operations? Harish Hande: At SELCO, we had come to solar energy from a perspective of decentralisation and sustainability. Now, it has become more mainstream, but it has lost its sustainability ethos. It has become part of the consumerist mindset and lifestyle. For example, if this building is fully powered by solar, does it give me the right to put 20 more air conditioners? That is the question. The beauty of solar energy was the possibilities it provided for decentralisation. That meant empowerment of the people and a certain democratisation. But that has changed now. Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you name a few successful appropriate tech solutions in India that have worked on the ground? Harish Hande: There are backpack refrigerators by Blackfrog Technologies which has developed a patented rapid cooling technology for the last-mile transport of vaccines. It can also be used to transfer clinical laboratory samples, insulin, breast milk, blood serum, and medications. There is work going on with spindle weaving and silk weaving technologies, grading of millets, and also with solar-powered 'chakli -murukku' making or even solar-powered chips making. You can even use an app on the phone to control the thickness of the chakli or murukku. Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about a few tech for impact startups that caught your eye? Harish Hande: One of the startups works on partograph, a software-based technology that monitors the condition of a woman during pregnancy, just before childbirth, and whether it's going to be a high-risk pregnancy. Another interesting innovation was within one of General Electric's divisions that cut down the power consumption of vaccine refrigerators and baby warmers by one-sixth. There are millet graders, weeding machines, seeding machines, drying machines, and roti rolling machines. Harish Hande: I see AI as an enabler to speed up innovation for the poor. I think it would help researchers speed up their search for alternatives and come up with solutions faster. The fear that AI would disrupt jobs is a bit misplaced. We need to see AI as an enabler and not as a decision-maker. Use AI effectively, and perhaps we won't go on reinventing the wheel.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Yahoo
Library to make system updates later this month
Apr. 11—By Julie Clinefelter Austin Public Library Director Do you remember the card catalog? The days of searching for a book by title, author or subject and finding the hand written 3×5 card with all the little publishing details about the book you were looking for? Those of us who do, remember with nostalgia the old wooden cabinets with their long drawers. What we may not all remember is how much work it was to keep those little square cards up to date with current information. Many regard technology as a mixed bag of helpful time savers and less useful inconveniences, but anyone who works in the creation of library catalogs would tell you that technology has been a great leap forward for librarians trying to keep up with helping patrons find the items. Especially in an era when approximately 11,000 books are published every day in the U.S. Library computer systems, called Integrated Library Systems (ILS), make the process of both cataloging and retrieving items faster, more precise and easier for everyone involved. The Austin Public Library's last ILS update was in 2003. Now, 22 years later, all Southeastern Libraries Cooperating (SELCO) regional libraries are preparing for a new computer migration. The new system, managed by SELCO for their member libraries, will be more intuitive, provide more data privacy features, be more mobile friendly, and overall create a smoother and more user-friendly experience. This migration will take place the week of April 28. Here is what you need to know: —The library will be closed to the public on Monday, April 28, while staff complete training and prepare the library for the switch. —From now on, library cards will need to be presented (the physical card or a digital version) when checking out items. New cards and replacement cards are free, and having that card in hand is the best way to ensure your data remains secure. —All MNLink borrowing and lending will be suspended April 10 through May 6 to accommodate for the change in systems. From Tuesday, April 29 through Thursday, May 1, 2025: —What you will be able to do at the library: check out items from our library, use meeting and study rooms, access public computers, access copy machine and printers —What you will NOT be able to do: renew checked out items, receive a new card, make new material requests, update library accounts, use self check machines, use the catalog computers —We ask that for that one week you please do NOT bring back items to the library. Nothing will have a due date that week and nothing will go overdue. We will not be able to check items in until the migration is complete. By the end of the week of April 28, the computer migration should be complete, and things at the library will return to normal with a shiny new, up to date computer system. MNLink borrowing and lending will also resume once the migration is complete. At that point, we invite you to come in and let our friendly staff show you what's new at the Austin Public Library.
