Renewable Energy and Water Access for Rural Development in India
Author: Organizing Team, UNLEASH Hack India: REWARD
On September 27 and 28, 40 young enthusiasts from all over India got together for a local UNLEASH Hack at the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST), Kattankulathur campus, to tackle challenges related to energy and water access especially in rural India. They learnt from Experts and members of UNLEASH Community to ensure their ideas are truly fit for the challenge at hand. India’s growth depends heavily on rural India which contributes to most of its total population. Inadequate access to electric power and water is identified as the major challenge that hinders the economic growth of rural India. As such, adaption to the renewable resources of energy and water is necessary to sustain the quality of livelihood.
The Hack, dubbed: UNLEASH Hacks India – Renewable Energy and Water Access for Rural Development (REWARD) fostered this awareness by bringing together young minds to discuss how to promote renewable energy and access to water in rural India. “The Hack facilitated a generous sharing of ideas across disciplines”, says S. Venkataprasad Bhat who was part of the Organizing Team.
Talents in the Hack worked in teams under the guidance of by UNLEASH Ambassador Dr. Vivek Manoharan as the lead facilitator, along with five other facilitators trained by UNLEASH. On the second day, 7 teams pitched their ideas to the expert judges about solutions to address challenges of access to clean water and renewable energy. Top 3 teams were selected and rewarded with support to further develop their prototypes. AZURE ZOE, the top winning team proposed to tackle the plastic pollution in Potheri Lake near the SRMIST campus using an autonomous trash-collecting robot and also demonstrated the idea with a simple prototype. Other teams came up with ideas such as removing the hardness of water using dried palm leaves powder; recycling heavy metals from tannery effluents using a tuned membrane filter; avoiding clogging in stormwater drains using aquatic jets; recovering harmful chromium from tannery waste; cleaning the water bodies by using potential UAV drones; and treating groundwater with a multistage filtration setup.
Collaborators in organizing the Hack included the Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, College of Engineering and Technology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, with the support of Directorate of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Directorate of Career Centre, Directorate of Alumni Affairs in SRMIST, Southern India Scientific Corporation, WATSAN Envirotech Private Limited, VayuJal Technologies and Ideaforage Innovations.
