Earth Hour 2012

Environment-conscious citizens can take part in one of the various activities lined up for this year’s Earth Hour - a practice observed worldwide to raise awareness on climate change - this evening. If you are still wondering or unclear about it, you can read about what is earth hour here.

Consumers are encouraged to switch off their non-essential lightings or electrical appliances during Earth Hour, which falls today, March 31, 2012. As its name suggest the period is one hour, starting from 8.30pm. During this period, our local energy utility, SESB, expects a reduction of load of 50 MW. But it also anticipate up to 70MW of drop of power consumption throughout the state.

For the record, highest drop of power demand was recorded in March, 2007 totalling 30.28 MW. Consumers in both Sabah and Federal Territory of Labuan took part in that practice.

Earth Hour Happenings: What and Where.

City Hall leads. City Hall collaborates with Sutera Harbour Resort to hold exciting programs at the tennis court (Sutera Harbour Resort), starting 6.00pm with food stalls, children’s recycled item contest, spa product show, and night photography. Night photography can be very rewarding and you would be surprised at how fascinating the results could be. Try it, compact point-and-shoot or DSLR camera would both give interesting perspectives.

Perhaps a good idea to take picture of the night/evening view of Sutera Harbour Resort itself.

Street-wise. Turning off of streetlights at 8.30pm along the main road from Tun Mustapha building (Yayasan Sabah) to the citi centre to Coastal Highway and down to Tanjung Aru. An entourage by the Mayor and other guests will cycle from the city to First Beach, Tanjung Aru later at 9.30pm.

Tun Mustapha Tower is on the far left. Can't imagine these street lights being switched-off.

Educating the youth. At St. Michael’s School, Miss Earth Sabah, Olivia Vun gave a talk on the Earth Hour and also conducted a quiz session with 500 secondary students on Friday. Organised by MNE (Mandy Nandu) Productions, such program is one of Miss Earth Sabah’s initiatives to practice the cause that they upheld. Also present was Sabah Environment Protection Director, Yabi Yangkat, and the program sponsor Gardenia’s GM David Yong.

What about petition? Sabah Wetlands Conservation Society (SWCS) will have a petition signing during Earth Hour (today, March 31 2012) against a proposed condominium project in the vicinity of the First Beach in Tanjung Aru.

Tg. Aru First Beach - maybe SWCS should highlight this indiscriminate felling of trees, too.

A challenge for a good cause

In support of the Earth Hour 2012, HSBC Bank Malaysia will switch off non-essential external lights and internal signboards in all of its branches starting 8.30pm nationwide.

HSBC also challenged you to a duel: “I will if you will”. In this challenge, the management pledges to plant 10 trees for every 1kg of used dry cells, rechargeable, mobile phone or laptop batteries collected. Special recycle bins will be placed at common and public areas within its headquarters in Leboh Ampang, Kuala Lumpur and selected branches nationwide. If you are HSBC’s customer and happen to read this, do ask the bank if they have the bins and take part of you have used batteries with you.

What about you?

If you prefer to stay at home and watch this weekend football matches, or enjoy some great movies, the least you can do is switch of one or two of your non-essential lightings, such as the 60W corridor bulb, the  2 x 36W garage fluorescent lamps, etc. For me, I will turn off one of the energy saving lamp at the backyard and the fluorescent tube at the entrance.

Happy Earth Hour, everyone. AND save few watts of energy today.


Note: All photographs in this article are taken by myself and are therefore copyrighted. Should you wish to paste them on your website, kindly give due credit and link them back to this page.

Demand for solar PV materials doubling in 5 years

Despite the imposition of tariffs on Chinese solar panels by the US Department of Commerce, sales of solar PV panels is set to increase by one-fold over the next 5 years.

AEI Consulting recon that, over the next five years, materials used in solar PV modules will surge to nearly US$42 billion worth of sales. This is a very encouraging finding from the perspective of solar PV entrepreneurs, as well as us who think green is the way forward. If the people still think that solar photovoltaic business is not profitable, this piece of information would and should be an eye opener.

PV cell and module chemical and material demand, in US $ millions. (Source: AEI Consulting)

AEI's studies are wide ranging and covers the production processes and supply chain for solar cell manufacturing, including silicon, slurries, gases, wet chemicals, precursors, dopants, and other materials. It found that the $19.7bil worth of solar photovoltaic materials transacted in 2011, polysilicon made up the biggest chunk:

41% - Polysilicon
16% - Glass, EVA films, backsheets
12% - Saw wires & slurries
11% - Metallic pastes
9%  - other chemicals
11% - other materials

However, in 4 years' time the use of poly-silicon would shrink to 16% as a result of adopting new means of reducing its use, and due to improved processing methods. Increasing cell efficiency also will lead to more technology improvements, which would effectively reduce the solar module prices.

Progress in the pipeline

Manufacturers of thin-film solar PV modules are progressing fast in improving efficiencies and reducing materials costs. Technology upgrades include improved plasma deposition, buffer layer designs, and anti-reflective layers, and laser patterning.

Also, advancements are seen with nano-crystalline silicon oxide doped layers, replacing the cadmium sulfide (Cds) buffer layer with a more transparent material (zinc oxide or ZnO), and adopting close spaced sublimation (CSS) deposition for CdTe cells.

What's in there for me?

Cost to put solar PV panels on your rooftop will obviously be cheaper. Cheap in this context is relative but judging from the world-wide investments and green initiatives by a lot of countries, you can be sure of better acceptance of this method of RE in the near term.

Currently, a grid-connected installation would cost you roughly RM14,000 to RM15,000 per kWp of solar PV. In 5 years, that could go down well below RM10,000 (US$3,000). Throw in the FiT incentive and you just need to pay a fraction of that upon signing of the power purchase agreement.

Previous article: Seminar transformasi negara


References:
RenewableEnergyWorld news,
AEI Research (Consulting)

Seminar transformasi negara

Date: 29 March 2012
Venue: Tun Hamdan Hall, Tamparuli
Speaker: Datuk Hj. Ibrahim Saad - Director of BTN, Sabah



"Minum dulu, Datuk", an organising committee member offering Datuk Hajiji Hj. Noor a drink during the closing ceremony.

It was an interesting session with the Village Heads and JKKK Chairpersons whereby they get some insight of the ongoing government transformation programs. A relatively brief session considering the large crowd turnout from Tamparuli, Kiulu and Tuaran.

I wished there was Q&A session so that participants could ask questions and bring forward suggestions and comments. I've wanted to ask about the GST implementation and seek clarification on how it will champion the interest of the generally poor people, or at least how this would benefit them. Tuaran is not one of the Districs with better income population. 

Then again, seminar lke this may not be the venue for such dialogue. Datuk Hj Ibrahim seem to be a well learnt person and he should've been able to provide a reasonably good answer to such query.