Embedded Files
22April2025 Mother Earth Day "Our Power, Our Planet": Express your gratitude to Mother Nature and seek her blessings by riding a Solar Assist Bicycle!
Are you best suited to Ride a Solar Assisted Bicycle?
Are you best suited to Ride a Solar Assisted Bicycle?
The Solar Assist bicycle is designed to suit persons of all ages and gender. It is best suited for senior citizens, women and elderly who are weak and do not consider themselves fit to ride other more heavy vehicles. It is also suitable for teenagers between 15 to 18 years of age who do not have a driving licence to ride more powerful vehicles on the road.
Yet, a Solar Assist Bicycle is NOT for everyone. Please read on to check if you meet the criteria to be a happy owner of a Solar Assisted Bicycle.
In case you are addicted to powerful vehicles such as SUVs, and if you are anxious to have power and speed in your hands then the Solar Assist Bicycle is NOT meant for you. Of course, if you have the will power to break the addiction, then you are welcome to try your hands on the solar bicycle
Do you have a passion for riding a Bicycle? If you used to ride one as a teenager but could not ride later due to lack of time or a change of lifestyle. If you would like to try riding a bicycle once again, but don't know how or where to begin. Then the Solar Assist Bicycle is the right personal vehicle for you.
In case you have medical conditions such as hyperthyroid, or if it is recommended by physiotherapist, or if you are physically challenged then too, solar assisted bicycles are best suited for you.
In case you are an environmentalist and wish to begin saving the planet from your own home garage, then again a solar assist bicycle is meant for you.
In case your country is taking vigorous steps to meet the UNFCCC target to keep the global warming under 1.5 ℃, and constructing bicycle trails, bicycle paths and bicycle lanes, then you can look forward to riding a solar assisted bicycle in a safe manner in designated corridors. Else you will be riding bicycles at your own risk to life.
If you are fond of riding bicycles but find it risky since it does not have safety features such as brake lights, tail lights or head-lights, then too you may consider riding a solar assisted bicycle which has all these features
If you are riding a vehicle with an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine), but would like to shift to an Electric Vehicle for environmental reasons then you would be surprised to know that you would still be contributing to GHG significantly after the shift. You may like to consider a Solar bicycle instead.
If you are interested in going to a gymnasium but cannot find time to do so, then you may consider riding to work on a solar assist bicycle. You will be able to burn the calories more regularly on a daily basis when riding to and from work.
If you wish to avoid spending on a expensive automobile. At just 1% of the cost of an Electric Car, riding a solar cycle represents a shift to a healthy lifestyle.
With a Solar Assist Bicycle having 7 speed gears, you can pedal comfortably at 25 km/hour with minimal drain on the battery if you are in the solar assist ⅗ mode and the 7th gear. If your place of work is about 6 km away, you can reach your destination in 15 minutes with a Solar assist bicycle. You would also have completed the recommended ½ hour daily workout without wasting any more time. If you are having a busy schedule and still interested in a healthy lifestyle, then Solar Assisted bicycles are right for you.
Buy a Solar Assist Bicycle only to satisfy one or more of the following four criteria ...
... (a) Love & Passion, (b) Health, (c) Environment, or (d) Safety.
Buy a Solar Assist Bicycle only to satisfy one or more of the following four criteria ...
... (a) Love & Passion, (b) Health, (c) Environment, or (d) Safety.
... if you have love and passion for bicycles and enjoy pedalling to work, school or groceries. Buy it only if you are health and fitness conscious and wish to lead a healthy life, or if you are an environmentalist and wish to reduce your carbon emissions. Or if you are concerned about your safety and desire safety features & lights on your bicycle.
A Solar Bicycle is NOT to be confused with EVs and other powered vehicles! It is to be considered as an extension of a regular road bicycle designed to offer solar energy assistance while pedalling to lower the pedalling effort, to make pedalling lighter, more fun, more enjoyable, and at the same time to make the ride safer with the numerous in-built safety features such as brake light, tail light, head-light, etc., all driven by solar energy.
To what extent are you willing to go in order to protect the environment?
To what extent are you willing to go in order to protect the environment?
Would you buy a new BS6 or EURO6 vehicle with ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) ?
Under the BS6 norm, the limit of pollution has been reduced - while the norm for Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) is reduced to 60mg/km, the Pariculate Matter (PM) has been restricted to 4.5mg/km (Actually the credit goes more to the BS6 fuel that contains less sulphur and NOx). Nevertheless internal combustion engines (ICE) do pollute, and more significantly cause global warming and deplete the planet of its scarce oil resources.
Would you buy a new Electric Car instead?
Our article on Solar Bicycles vs. EVs shows how you would be continuing to use fossil fuel to charge your Electric Vehicle (EV), and thus would be still responsible for pollution (in sharp contrast to the claims made by GEDA).
Are you willing to ride a solar bicycle (max. speed = 30 km/hr) to work?
At just 1% of the cost of an Electric Car, riding a solar cycle represents a shift to a healthy lifestyle.
The Need to Promote Solar Cycles instead of EVs
The Need to Promote Solar Cycles instead of EVs
India is taking giant steps to promote Electric Vehicles (EVs) in India. In addition to schemes provided by the central government, several state governments have announced incentives for EVs. The Gujarat Electric Vehicle Policy 2021 provides for subsidy of up to Rs 20,000 on EVs in the two-wheeler category, Rs 50,000 for three-wheelers, and up to Rs 1.5 lakh for cars. Also, the State government has exempted e-vehicles registered in Gujarat RTOs from paying registration fee. In light of the same, Gujarat recently reported a 956 percent increase in EV sales by the end of 2021 since 2019. In sharp contrast, neither the central nor state governments are offering any subsidy for solar vehicles which are far superior to plain vanilla EVs.
According to GEDA (Gujarat Energy Development Agency), the state nodal / designated agency (SNA/ SDA) for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy Sources (MNRE) and Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), respectively, the EVs are battery fuelled, so they help in keeping the environment pollution free. GEDA offers the subsidy to customers for EVs in Gujarat.
According to Centre for Apparent Energy Research (CAER), Baroda Electric Meters Limited, EVs may actually not be helping the environment as projected. A survey carried out by CAER shows that most customers who opt for EVs and have availed the subsidy as per the Gujarat Electric Vehicle Policy 2021, have earlier also opted for another subsidy, again offered by GEDA - namely the Surya Urja Rooftop Yojna that offers 40% subsidy to the residential consumers who have installed Rooftop Solar. These consumers offset their solar generation against the units consumed to charge their EVs. Now, due to a flawed electric tariff structure, called Net Metering, popular world-wide and approved locally by the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC), the Electric Distribution Utility such as MGVCL is unable to differentiate between consumers who export different quantum of solar energy as long as their net difference between the units imported and exported, respectively, remain the same. Amongst them, we label the one at one extreme end, who exports his entire solar generation during the day while importing an equal amount of units at night to charge his EV, to be 'totally undesirable'. On the other extreme end, we consider a consumer to be 'desirable', if he consumes his entire solar generation, himself.
An 'undesirable EV consumer' creates two major problems for the electric utility. On one side, expensive fossil fuel (coal/ oil) based generation is used to charge the EVs. Hence, EVs are responsible for pollution - may not be at his door step, but at the coal or oil based power generation plants (in sharp contrast to the claims made by GEDA). Regardless of the place where the pollution occurs, the environment does get affected - since we all have a single intra-connected Mother Earth.
The second problem the 'undesirable EV consumer' creates to the electric utility is for the latter to find another consumer who is willing to receive the solar generation exported by the EV consumer. Since electrical energy is perishable and needs to be consumed the very same instant it gets generated, the utility has a mammoth job particularly with the rising number of solar rooftops and 950% increase in EVs. Would it not have been better if the said " undesirable EV consumer" would use his solar consumption to charge his own EV?
Actually, EVs are considered to be a different kind of load in comparison to other consumer loads. Other electrical loads such as a motor, or a fan or a TV operates and consumes the energy the same instant it is drawn from the electrical utility. An EV is different - it contains a storage element - namely a rechargeable battery - as an electrical load. The battery gets charged when plugged to the electrical utility ac mains, but the EV is used only at other times, later, after the battery charging process gets completed. The battery, as a storage element, offers the consumer a very important choice - when to charge the battery. And it is best, from the environment point of view, for the EV consumer to charge his/her EV with his/her own solar generation. But the EV consumer rejects the proposal - saying that his EV is away from home during the day and available only for an 'over the night' charging at home.
Simultaneously, looking at another growing menace of underage (less than 18 years old) students illegally riding vehicles powered by petrol engines with capacity over 50 cc or EVs with motors of capacity greater than 250 Watts, CAER has developed in-house a solar bicycle targeting students who are 16 years old and above. After extensive lab and field testing, the indigenous and innovative solar bicycles for boys and girls was launched on the eve of World Environment Day, 5th June 2022. Originally priced at ₹33K, but as a mark of protest against the unfair subsidy policy of the Government, BEM has 'self-subsidised' or discounted the bicycles by 40% and has been selling them for ₹19,940 (inclusive of taxes). While the cost of the solar bicycle represents just 1% of the cost of an E-Car, it is a pity that the Indian government holds no qualms in refusing to subsidise solar bicycles. Imagine : the subsidy that the government doles out to a single customer purchasing an expensive E-car (that we have shown to be in futility) could, otherwise, have helped to subsidise 100 Nos. of truly environmentally friendly solar bicycles!
A solar bicycle, unlike an E-car, is truly an environment friendly solution and should be embraced by us Indians. In many other countries, such as the Netherlands, the learned (such as Professors) are observed to be using simple bicycles (not even an e-bicycle or a solar one) while the uneducated class such as the truck drivers are seen to drive expensive cars. In India, it is the opposite - cars are considered to be a symbol of status and to ride a bicycle is considered to be below one's dignity on any day other than World Environment Day! The lack of subsidy to e-bicycles and solar bicycles is adequate proof to support this statement. If India wishes to be truly environmentally friendly, it needs to mend ways, swallow its ego and pride, bow down before Mother Earth and do whatever it takes to reduce the fossil fuel combustion and associated green-house gases (GHG). With a choice of 3 modes of operation - full throttle, pedal assist (PAS), and manual pedalling, a solar bicycle can suit every individual's taste, from the lazy ones to the ones who are health conscious.
A solar bicycle has many other advantages over E-Cars. Solar bicycles have its own solar generation system mounted on it. Unlike E-Cars, one does not need to hunt for an EV charging station, nor does one need to waste time charging the battery at the charging station. As long as the solar panel on the cycle is kept facing the Sun during the day regardless if whether the bicycle is stationary or in motion, the battery would continue to get charged and the rider would be able to travel the maximum distance as indicated by the battery capacity. In case you do run out of battery power, unlike other e-vehicles you do not get stranded in the middle of no-where. You can pedal your way back home (to safety).
E-Car or E-bike Charging stations have other problems too. Eager to reduce the charging time, these stations increase the charging current which not only duly reduces the life of the battery but also could result in an explosion or the vehicle catching fire. On the other hand, solar charging in the case of solar bicycles is more gentle and elegant, thereby increasing the battery life and reducing the chances of battery overheating.
There are many others, seemingly insignificant but actually large differences. One is the efficiency of the charge process. When you charge an EV battery from an electric utility ( 230 Volt ac) mains, an AC to DC conversion takes place which is inefficient. This means high temperature - low reliability operation, or requirement for forced cooling or bigger heat sink for the charger. Many AC to DC chargers are also seen to inject harmful harmonics into the AC system. On the other hand, in case of a solar bicycle, the solar panel to battery charging process is DC to DC which is more efficient, which means that the charger can be smaller in size, more reliable, eliminating the need for cooling fans, thus generating less noise, etc.
Unlike other EV chargers, the solar charger provided on the solar bicycle is ARM microcontroller based and intelligent. The ARM controller chooses an optimum - Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) point so as to perform the DC to DC (Solar to Battery) conversion efficiently, thus enabling charging with a smaller solar panel that can be carried on a bicycle. On the other hand, carrying solar panels of sufficient capacity on an E-Car is still a distant dream.
In the year 2022, the number of registered 4-wheeler in India is 7 crores, while the number of 2-wheeler is 21 crores, representing 5% and 15% of the Indian population. It has been studied that more than 80% of all the trips and 68% of the total distance made on these vehicles are to destinations at distances that are 8 kms or less. Assuming that an average 4-wheeler and 2-wheeler consumes 360 litres and 120 litres per annum, if the consumers shift to solar bicycles for the short trips, then that savings made would be ₹ 24K and ₹ 8K respectively. The savings made by each category (2 or 4-wheeler) per annum would be ₹ 1.7 lakh crores.
Hence, if Indian consumers choose a solar bicycle over other vehicles for their short distance rides, it would represent an annual savings in petrol/diesel or gas consumption by ₹ 3.4 lakh crores, forex savings of ₹ 1.7 lakh crores, CO2 emission reduction by 170 million tonnes and marketable carbon credits worth about ₹ 13,000 crores. These figures need to be considered seriously by the policy and decision makers guiding India's future.
Published on World Environment Day - 5th June 2022 by Dr. Vithal Narasinha Kamat, Baroda Electric Meters Ltd.
Readers may send in their suggestions through Whats App on Mobile #(+91)98240 74054
Page updated
Report abuse