Well, everybody living here in Kuwait how hot it is when the government declares the official temperature as 50 deg. A couple of minutes on a bad glass is enough to start a fire, as we saw the Sawaber Complex incident.

In this time, it is very imperative that we manage the power prudently and not waste it on unproductive work.

In order to overcome the power crisis, what the govt authorities have suggested is to reduce the govt work timing to 12 noon. So that reduces the official working hours to 5, including the breaks of all kinds.

What I am trying to emphasize is that to beat the power crisis, the government is not focusing on generating power from the resources which are plentiful and requires minimum efforts to tap, namely SOLAR ENERGY. People talk of having a nuclear power plant, as if it can be built over a year.

We need to concentrate on tapping the solar energy to beat the power crisis. A community power plant may take longer to materialize; hence individual houses can tap this energy to beat the power crisis. In this regards, the govt should form a committee to promote the SOLAR energy to all by giving incentives and facilitating easy import of solar panels that can be incorporated into the homes easily.

Well just to make a start, why don’t we get this small, pocketable, foldable solar charge that can charge your mobiles, iPods, etc.

Japanese firm ambienTec has a smart and fashionable solution.  They make the 2W, 5V USB Solar Fold and  Solarfan portable chargers SC001P1-01BK which can provide 3 hours of listening time on your ipod (or 3 minutes of mobile phone talk time)  for every 10 minutes of sunlight exposure. The 186g Solar Fold has dimensions of 195×69×22(mm) looks like a fan when maximize.

It’s a nice sunny summer day and you’re out at the beach watching nice Japanese babes in their bikinis listing to your ipod. The battery is running out of juice and you have no spares and no recharger – what can you do?  Japanese firm ambienTec has a smart and fashionable solution.  They make the 2W, 5V USB Solar Fold and  Solarfan portable chargers ソーラーフォルド SC001P1-01BK which can provide 3 hours of listening time on your ipod (or 3 minutes of mobile phone talk time)  for every 10 minutes of sunlight exposure.

The 186g Solar Fold has dimensions of 195×69×22(mm) looks like a fan when maximized

A Japanese co. called Konarka Technologies has come up with a nice concept of a Solar power charging laptop bag. It can also be adapted to charge multiple portable devices. So next time you go outing, don’t forget this bag.

The TARSHEED program has cost a whopping 35 million dollars.

The Ministry of Energy launched, inAug 2007,  an all-encompassing conservation campaign at the start of the summer season in Kuwait. The campaign is called ‘Tarsheed’ which is the Arabic word for “guidance”.  residents in Kuwait were been bombarded with SMS messages, TV & Radio ads, fliers taped to car windshields and stuffed into mailboxes as well as giant placards scattered all over the roads pleading with residents to conserve energy. The Ministry has even ensured that all the languages in Kuwait, from Urdu to Hindi, are included in the campaign. And there is even a hotline that residents can call to report abuses of energy in the country. This was a perfect example of the famous saying ‘ There is darkness below the lamp that glows”. What nobody saw, noticed or reported, is the blatant abuse of power in the government and bank offices, where you can see for yourself, that the lights for all the rooms in the whole building are on 24 x 7. It does not mean that the staff is working round the clock (to raise the productivity index of Kuwait, which is abysmally low). Let the chairman of the Tarsheed campaign take on this education campaign to educate the staff in those government offices to put of the lights & other electrical equipment, when not needed.

Kuwait is the richest country in the World due to its’ mass oil reserves. So, why would a country like this have a problem with energy? Over consumption is the answer. Electricity is cheap in Kuwait. As a result, the public wastes energy because they are not in dire want of it. They take it for granted.

The Tarsheed campaign has been successful in getting the word out and scaring the public silly. No one wants a power shortage. Life comes to a halt in Kuwait when there is no electricity to turn on the AC or even a fan. All you can do is ‘bake’ and pray for the electric to come back on! The public has been very receptive and so far my electricity has not gone off once this summer. And the campaign rolls on. They even installed a few Tarsheed meters around the country. It shows, in real time, the current amount of electricity being used by the country as a whole. The meter has 3 colors…green, orange and red. Motorists passing by the meters can visualize the rate of consumption and (if the meter is in the red area) when they go home they can take appropriate measures to conserve energy and avoid a debilitating power cut.

The newest installment in the rigorous Tarsheed campaign is, what some are calling, the ‘Tarsheed Police’. The Ministry had hired 100 inspectors to ensure that energy is being conserved in Kuwait.

Unfortunately, only recently has Kuwait explored alternatives to deal with the demand for energy for its’ populous. According to the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), a recent study conducted by German scientific research centers have found that if Kuwait utilizes only 10% of its’ total area to generate solar energy from the sun it would be the equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil per day. The Kuwaiti government is vigorously investing in the renewable energies sector. KISR predicts that Kuwait will be a mass exporter of electricity generated by the Sun by 2050 and will export renewable energy to countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Somebody please remind them that ‘Money can’t buy everything’.