Community Park/ Ecological Garden - integrating human values

Whenever, I read about Lord Krishna, I read about Kadamba tree.  I have never seen a Kadamba tree.  Even if I get an opportunity to see it, I will not be able to identify it like many other trees.  I have been distanced from the nature to the extent, I can now identify few trees among the thousands of species.  

There are thousand of varieties of birds.  How many of them do we see it in our daily life?  how many of them could we recognise?  I always wondered about seeing them in natural environment even if it is only a life like model.  I miss the nature trail in the park with life like model of birds and animals.

I remember sight of the bird Neel kanth was considered very auspicious.  It is related to mythology of  lord Shiva.  It was must to see this bird on Dussehra.  Our cultural and tradition link to nature is vanishing.  What could be done to restore our cultural and traditional values and our knowledge about nature?

Broadly the parks could be categorised into six categories

1. Heritage Parks or botanical garden: Parks with historical or archaeological or horticulture features. This include planting as many species as possible with tagging of botanical name, local name and use in daily life.

2. Conservation Parks: Parks with a strong ecological and nature conservation value. Main activities in these kinds of parks include bird watching, nature walks and environmental camps. This includes the providing nest for birds, models of animals and birds in natural environment etc. This may also include water harvesting schemes and display of soil and water conservation techniques.

3. Cultural and tradition Park: Park with trees which are necessary part of our culture/ tradition and folklore. 

4. Medicinal Park: With medicinal plant 

5. Recreation Parks: Parks with children’s playgrounds, leisure facilities, lakes, boating etc.

6. Health or fitness Park: Park with focus on health activities like Yoga, jogging track with distance marking, exercises/ fitness area etc.

I am not aware of any effort to converge all types of park into one  integrated community garden or central park. It become a knowledge cum conservation cum recreational cus fitness cum culture cum heritage park.  Will your corporate be the first to develop such a park? 

The park are not only a recreational place for family outing and keeping us away from  the video games and idiot box but also an important aspect of our culture, tradition and environment.

Do you know any organisation which has adopted this concept.  Or be the first among the corporate. 

Please share your views/ comments.

Dinesh Agrawal

DC or LCB Solar water pump (no battery, no inverter)

One of the biggest issue with the use of solar power is need for inverter and batteries, which need maintenance and replacement, a difficult proposition in the remote villages/ schools.  This requirement arises as the lighting is required during the night time when sunlight is not available. 

But water supply is required during day time only.  Water could also be stored in the tanks.  This obviates the need for costly batteries and inverter.  There are two options - one using the DC water pump and two using linear current booster.  This reduces the cost of whole system significantly and limit it to solar panel and pump only.  

I am not aware whether these simple systems are being used in India. Will your organisation be the first to develop this in India? Please share your view and comments.  

Dinesh Agrawal

The details of two system is given below

PV Direct
This type of water pumping is about as simple as it can get. A solar panel coupled directly to a DC water pump, without any batteries or inverters in between. When it’s sunny, water is pumped. These are commonly used in agricultural applications such as irrigation or livestock. Farmers around the world are switching to solar stock watering and drip irrigation due to its simplicity.

There are two ways to pump your water - quickly with high power consumption, or more slowly over a longer time with low power consumption.  Low power consumption is why Simple Pump is an excellent solar submersible well pump alternative.

Linear Current Booster

A linear current booster is a least cost way to pump water. A LCB boosts the current flow from a solar panel by sacrificing voltage to the pump.  The advantage of doing this is that the pump can start earlier in the morning and run later in the afternoon or can operate from a smaller solar panel than a direct connection between the solar panel and the pump.

Therefore it can run for longer time and can often pump water on cloudy days when a panel direct connection would not provide enough energy to run the pump.

The disadvantage of using a LCB is that the pump will run slower during early or late periods or on cloudy days than it will run during peak sun hours.