An Innovative Approach to Use Solar Energy Utilising Drinking Bird Principle for Water Lifting in Rural Areas in India

Abstract

One element of development gap has been scarcity of energy and power supply in the less developed areas in our country. Moreover, within prevailing energy crisis and increasing cost of power generation using fossil fuels or nuclear energy search for unconventional means has almost become an important necessity. The key to increased living standards in any community is the efficient utilization of natural resources. It is therefore, axiomatic that poorer sections of our country must get developed their energy resources to enjoy their lives. Remotely dispersed villages with population of two to three thousand lack conventional sources of energy. Providing them with electricity and other fossil fuels is uneconomical mainly because their demands are very low and many of them are remote from energy producing centres. It appears, development of small indigenous power sources would play important role in rural modernization, which, in addition to increasing agricultural production, would also help restricting migration of rural people to urban cities. Hence, an innovative approach utilising principle of the drinking bird toy has been explored for developing a device using solar energy, which is locally and cheaply available energy source in abundance, for water lifting from nearby canals, and nalas where water level is half to two meters below the ground level. The current article would discuss about the design and performance etc. of the same in detail.