Updates - 8th Aug- GE Water - Atul

On 8/8/07, Atul Kumar < > wrote:

Had a discussion with H Bala (Country Head for GE Water, India) late night his time. He has promised to revert by tomorrow on possible help and details. Solar RO equipment is relatively cheaper/easier and within his scope so more feasible and immediate. Can have about 50,000 litre/day capacity so can take take care of 10,000 families at 5 litre/day (conservative). Having couple of these units will be useful. This looks possible and he will be trying to get a financial grant from GE for the same since investment will be within few lacs.

Bigger equipment like Mobile Water will be really expensive (in crores) though can take care of much larger population and might need to be shipped by Aircrafts etc so shipping costs and logistics etc will be huge and has to be a government level initiative even if GE were to provide it just at cost. Also diesel run power supply etc needed.

In case of Solar RO his engineers will take care of installing etc but we need to take care of local logistics like, when and where and govt or reputed NGO will be needed. He has promised to send the details tomorrow morning his time. Bala also shared the experience in Chennai during Tsunami when the equipment and engineers landed but there was nobody to own them and villagers took (GE Engineers) as government and it was a bit chaotic. Hence maybe we can start a discussion with Chanchal Kumar / CK Mishra / Vivek Kumar and relevant senior IAS officers for the same where the solution would work or not. maybe TVS can take a lead with them.

Also if Chandan or someone on ground can give some data on some target "districts" and "population" to be served by these Solar ROs then will help

Bala has also promised that he will buzz his engineers at Jamshedpur and Calcutta for giving a quick status on feasibility and also any help possible from the Tata Group who probably use similar equipment and are his customers and might want to help.

My take is that we should continue with our current efforts at Chlorine etc and take this as an additional/supplemental option. Even if 5-10 districts can get really clean water then we can feel happy. These equipment can take rain water / flood water also as inputs so will be really helpful.


Regards
Atul