University of Phoenix the Institute for the Future has produced a new report titled Future Work Skills 2020. It identifies the key driving factors changing the workplace, but the actual skills section leaves something to be desired. This report is probably best for college students or mid-career workers thinking about making a change but haven't looked deeply into the matter yet.
Six drivers of change:
- Extreme longevity - Increasing global lifespans change the nature of careers and learning.
- Rise of smart machines and systems - Workplace automation nudges human workers out of rote, repetitive tasks.
- Computational world - Massive increases in sensors and processing power make the world a programmable system.
- New media ecology - New communication tools require new media literacies beyond text.
- Superstructured organizations - Social technologies drive new forms of production and value creation.
- Globally connected world - Increased global interconnectivity puts diversity and adaptability at the center of organizational operations.
Some of these are more obvious than others, and futurists have been talking about most of these issues for decades now. However, they are indeed some of the most important drivers of the workplace and both students and workers should be be thinking about how these trends will effect them.
the report suggests the following as key skills in the future workforce:
Sense-making - The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.
Social intelligence - Ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired intentions
Novel and adaptive thinking - Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based.
Cross-cultural competency - Ability to operate in different cultural settings.
Computational thinking - Ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning.
New-media literacy - Ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communications.
Trans-disciplinarity - Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
Design mindset - Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes.
Cognitive load management - Ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques.
Virtual collaboration - Ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team.
The news initially came from a Jalopnik reader who sent the auto blog a photo of the fender-bender with another Prius near Google's Mountain View, California headquarters. The accident appears to be minor and no one was hurt, judging by the photo. Jalopnik and many other websites reported the incident as the "first caused by Google's self-driving car," which prompted a quick response from a Google spokesperson.
In a statement sent to Business Insider, that spokesperson clarified that the car (and Google's software) wasn't to blame for the Prius-on-Prius accident; its driver was.
"Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car," the spokesperson said.
Google's self-driving cars use a combination of video cameras, radar sensors, and laser range finders to see other cars and rely on Google Maps and Earth to navigate the road, Google Software Engineer Sebastian Thrun says in a blog post in October 2010. He also points out that the autonomous cars had trained drivers and software engineers inside during testing.
Naturally if an accident were to occur while the car was in auto-pilot, it could cause some serious problems for Google's project. Let's go out on a limb and hypothesize that the car was to blame, even partially. It would be much easier for Google to have an employee take the fall rather than the software. Not to mention that it would probably next to impossible to prove otherwise.
Chris Matyszczyk: "And, though Google might--in a left-brained manner--want us to believe that is human error, its deftly phrased spokes-quote didn't suggest there was any error at all," he wrote. "So the 'person' was 'manually driving the car.' But no word on whether the 'person' made a mistake. Or whether the car did."
Matyszczyk asked Google to release more information on the incident to try to get to the bottom of the situation. Google only offered one additional bit of information: the car's logs confirmed it was in manual mode.
BrightSource Energy, the California startup that is building the first large-scale solar thermal power plant to break ground in the United States in 20 years, on Friday filed a license application with California regulators to build a second huge solar complex that features new technology.
The 500-megawatt Hidden Hills Solar Electric Generating System would be built in two 250-megawatt phases on 5.12 square miles of privately owned Mojave Desert land in California’s Inyo County on the Nevada border. The site is 45 miles west of Las Vegas and north of BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah facility now under construction on the California side of the border.
The project is the first to seek approval from the California Energy Commission since regulators rushed to approve nine large solar thermal power plants last year so their developers could qualify for billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees. The loan guarantee program is set to sunset on Sept. 30 and Hidden Hills will test financiers’ appetite for such projects absent such a subsidy.
BrightSource, which is backed by French energy giant Alstom, Morgan Stanley, Google, Chevron and NRG Energy, filed for a $250 million initial public offering in April and has signed contracts to deliver 2,610 megawatts of electricity to utilities Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.
The company deploys vast fields of mirrors called heliostats to focus the sun’s rays on a water-filled boiler that sits atop a tower. The resulting steam drives an electricity-generating turbine.
In a sign that solar technology is unlikely to stand still for long in the race to bring more efficient power plants online, BrightSource has increased the height of its “power tower” at the Hidden Hills project to 750 feet from the 459-foot height of those being built at Ivanpah. Each tower at Hidden Hills would be surrounded by a field of 85,000 heliostats.
“The new, higher, 750-foot solar power tower allows the heliostat rows to be placed closer together, with the mirrors at a steeper angle,” the company stated in its license application. “This substantially reduces mirror shading and allows more heliostats to be placed per acre. More megawatts can be generated per acre and the design is more efficient overall.”
BrightSource on Wednesday announced it would incorporate molten salt storage in its power plants to extend their operating hours past sunset. No mention of such a system was made in the Hidden Hills application but its addition would most likely depend on a request from the utility that purchases the complex’s electricity.
The company has set out an ambitious construction schedule, stating that it anticipates ground would be broken by the third quarter of 2012 and Hidden Hills would begin generating electricity in 2015.
In contrast, it took more than three years for state and federal regulators to approve the Ivanpah project, which is being built on land managed by the Interior Department.
BrightSource will largely avoid the feds involvement by building on land leased from a private owner. The company also apparently hopes to sidestep disputes over the impact of its power plants on the imperiled desert tortoise, a controversy that has dogged the Ivanpah project.
According to its license application for Hidden Hills, initial surveys found only two desert tortoises on the project site.
Japan's population is quickly aging--by 2015, the country will have 5.69 million people in need of nursing care. There are only so many times that a person can lift patients from a futon to a wheelchair. Currently, caretakers working in nursing facilities perform this act an average of 40 times a day. And so in true Japanese style, a group of researchers have manufactured a robot to help out.
The RIBA II (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance) is the second iteration of RIBA, a bot developed by the RIKEN research institute that can lift patients out of their wheelchairs, onto a bed, and back again. Unlike the original robot, RIBA II has joints in its base and lower back that allow it to crouch and scoop up a patient lying on a floor-level Japanese futon (this is a common sleeping style in the country). Check out a video of RIBA in action here.
Lest you be concerned that RIBA may crush one of its charges, the latest version of the bot features rubber tactile sensors that can sense a person's weight purely from touch. Still, we imagine the day will come when RIBA breaks down while cradling a patient--without a real, live caregiver in site.
RIBA isn't the first elder-care robot to come out of Japan. In the past few years, we've seen a Hybrid Assisted Limb that can boost the wearer's strength by a factor of 10, a robotic bed that turns into a wheelchair on command, and a seal-like robot that is supposed to be a pet replacement for elderly people who can no longer care for real animals. In the U.S., the PR2 bot is being primed to help the elderly perform daily tasks.
Such advanced technology doesn't come cheap. When it goes on sale in 2015, RIBA II will cost approximately $78,000.
[via FASTCompany]
iCloud, the new cloud computing platform from Apple – and the replacement for many MobileMe features – isn't set to fully launch until this fall. But this week, Apple rolled out a limited version of iCloud for developers, and already, techies are foaming at the mouth.
The UI seamlessly blends elements of OS X Lion and iOS, using iOS-style alert pop-ups, but the look of Lion iCal for example. ICloud will debut at a variety of price points: 5GB of storage a year is free, 10GB of storage costs $20 a year, 25GB costs $40, and 50 GB costs a hundred bucks.
So how does iCloud stack up against competing services from Amazon and Google? Over at Forbes, Brian Caulfield has a pretty good breakdown – "Amazon’s service appears to be the most straightforward, Google’s cloud storage offering is the cheapest, while Apple’s is shaping up to be the one that offers the best integration with your existing devices," Caulfield writes. (For a comparison of the prices on the different platforms, check out this report.)
But that integration, along with the intuitive Apple interface, come at a price. "ICloud is clearly built to keep customers on Apple’s hardware and software," Caulfield writes. "The ultimate promise: write a document on Apple's iWork suite of applications and you’ll be able to access it from any of your other Apple devices, or the Web." Of course, Apple's MO is to keep people in the Apple mindset, from iTunes on down, so longtime users shouldn't be too surprised.
The bigger question is how eager people will be to throw their digital lives up on the cloud. In theory, the cloud is a great idea: All your files, when you want them, no matter what device you've got in your hand. But as evidenced by a recent Amazon outage, folks can be awful quick to freak out when the cloud goes dark. In that way, Apple has two hurdles to cross: Make iCloud accessible and cheap, and also make it bulletproof.
Accidents involving wind turbines alone have tripled in the last decade, and watchdog groups fear incidents could skyrocket further placing more workers and even bystanders in harm's way because a surge in projects requires hiring hordes of new and often inexperienced workers. Last year, the solar industry grew 67% and doubled its employment in the U.S. to 100,000 workers, according to the Solar Energy Industries Assn. The concerns have a particular resonance in California, home to many of the nation's largest solar and wind projects. Many wind turbine technicians work in a bathroom-size space 20 stories above ground surrounded by high-voltage electrical equipment. Wind turbine accidents involving injuries and equipment damage have surged over the last decade, peaking in 2008 with 128 incidents worldwide, according to the Caithness Wind farm Information Forum.
Since the 1970s, there have been 78 fatalities, with about half in the U.S. The number of solar incidents is harder to gauge, but most industry workers say it's rising. In April 2010, Hans Petersen was taking a break from graduate theology studies and had been installing solar panels for six months when he stumbled off the sloped roof at a Northern California public housing complex and plunged 45 feet to his death. Fires atop wind towers have scattered burning debris, according to neighbors, who also describe hastily built wind installations collapsing within months and harsh weather conditions exacerbating wear and tear. watchdog groups say a hodgepodge of state and federal renewable energy safety standards haven't kept up with the growth of the industry. Some were adapted from other industries and don't specifically cover wind and solar projects, while others are guidelines rather than mandatory regulations.
This year, the American wind Energy Assn. launched a program to collect safety data for the industry. It also has online advisories that include warnings about working in high winds, requirements for fall protection above six feet and recommendations for frequent crane inspections and lightning safety plans. The solar industry trade group said it is working on its own set of best practices. technicians there operate a torture chamber for solar panels, testing the technology's endurance by trying to destroy it. The wind industry is also curtailing "shoddy" practices such as leaving fences open around high-voltage equipment and driving trucks at high speeds through installation sites, said Fraser McLachlan, chief executive of renewable energy underwriter GCube Insurance Services Inc.
Criminals have increased the functionality of Android Trojans with a new strain that is capable of recording, and not just logging, conversations on compromised smartphones.
Previous mobile malware strains for Google's mobile platform had the ability to log the duration and numbers of incoming and outgoing calls. The new malware goes further than this by capturing the content of conversations before storing them on the SD-slot memory card of infected Android phones.
These conversations may then be uploaded to a server under the control of hackers, according to tests of the malware by security researchers from CA in a closed environment. "Once the malware is installed in the victim device, it drops a 'configuration' file that contains key information about the remote server and the parameters," CA researcher Dinesh Venkatesan explains.
The as-yet-unnamed malware doesn't have the ability to install by itself. Victims would need to agree to install the application, agreeing to grant it permissions including record audio, read the state of a phone and prevent it from sleeping.
As such, the malware looks like a prototype of some sort, minus the social engineering trickery to disguise it as a game or some such that users might be tricked into installing, or perhaps a tool for suspicious spouses to use against their partners.
Apple went live with its iCloud website Monday but the new portal for the company's big cloud-based services push appears to still be a work-in-progress. Access to the site is reportedly available only to existing MobileMe customers on Mac OS X desktops and notebooks.
Another big hint that iCloud.com isn't precisely ready for prime time—the prominent yellow "beta" banner attached to the log-in screen.
While some MobileMe users are reporting the ability to log into iCloud.com, where they can then access working apps, others are prompted to move their existing MobileMe mail, contacts, calendar, and bookmarks over to iCloud with a popup window that doesn't appear to be functional, according to AppleInsider.
A first attempt by PCMag editors to simply log into the site on a Mac met with no success other than a screen promising that iCloud is "coming soon." Later, when we tried installing the latest iOS update on an iPhone before a second try, our log in attempt on iCloud.com was still a no-go.
That may be because the insides of the new iCloud site haven't yet been made available to iOS devices, according to AppleInsider. Other iPad and iPhone users can access the iCloud.com landing page but apparently get stuck on the same "coming soon" screen we ourselves did.
"MobileMe Web apps are currently blocked from iOS mobile users, apparently because Apple's mobile browser does not support the 'real web' well enough to work acceptably with them," according to the site. "This prevents iOS users from accessing a secondary account."
Piecing together reports from around the Web, it seems only MobileMe customers using Macs with OS X Lion installed can get inside iCloud.com, and it's not entirely clear if those are the only criteria required.
Tablets and smartphones running Google's Android and other non-iOS mobile operating systems are also apparently able to access the "coming soon" screen which prompts visitors to "download the iOS native apps," though no such apps exist for those devices.
In the very early going, iCloud.com appears to be aimed only at developers, according to 9to5Mac.
"Apple has just opened up the iCloud.com Web interface for developers," the site reports. "The website is in beta and features all new Web apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and more. In addition, it appears that iCloud.com will offer a portal for users to view their iWork documents that are stored in the cloud via iCloud. On top of all of this, Find my iPhone is an integrated Web application."
[via PCMAG]
Nissan has developed a system that allows a vehicle to supply electricity to power a house.
A prototype of the charging system running on a Nissan Leaf electric car was unveiled in Japan on Tuesday. The system can be used to supply electricity to a house during a power outage or shortage. A two-way charging device that would typically convert the household electricity supply to a voltage suitable for charging the car's battery can be reversed to feed power back into the household circuit.
The lithium ion batteries in a Leaf can story up to 24kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity, which Nissan estimates is sufficient to power an average Japanese home for about two days. That means if the system was used for a few hours during the day, the car would still retain enough power to make trips.
If the system is used regularly, it could also help cut energy bills. By charging the car overnight, when power demand is low and electricity is cheaper, the stored energy in the battery can be released in the daytime when electricity costs are higher.
Some companies already offer dedicated lithium ion storage batteries for just this purpose. Nissan's system accomplishes the same goal with the batteries already fitted in the car, which would be an advantage for owners of electric cars.
Nissan plans to commercialize the system sometime before April 2012, said Shiro Nagai [cq], a spokesman for Nissan in Yokohama. Models for the overseas market will likely follow but will first have to be designed for local electricity supply systems, he said.
The company did not announce pricing details.
Nissan is announcing the system as energy saving measures are at the forefront of Japanese minds. Power outages and shortages were rare in Japan until this year. The accidents in March at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant left a dent in Tokyo Electric Power's generation capability that has been subsequently compounded by additional reactors being taken offline for safety checks.
The Tokyo area suffered a series of blackouts in March, soon after the earthquake and tsunami that hit the region, and more are possible. The potential shortfall in electricity supply has put the country on a power-saving mission.
Car companies like Nissan have shifted to a Saturday to Wednesday work week while other companies have adjusted work patterns. Lights have been dimmed across the country, escalators are switched off at railway stations and households are being urged to keep air conditioners off during the daytime.
The power saving measures are having a real effect.
On Tuesday, as Nissan was announcing the new system, electricity demand in Tokyo was hovering around 37 billion watts, well below TEPCO's peak generating capacity for the day of 50 billion watts. Last year on the same day the Tokyo region was consuming over 55 billion watts at peak time.
Flight 523 from New York had just touched down and passengers were applauding the pilot's landing in the South American country Saturday when something suddenly went wrong.
The Boeing 737-800 slid off the end of a rainy runway, crashed through a chain-link fence and broke in half just short of a deep ravine. Yet all 163 people on board survived.
Officials were starting to probe the cause of the crash even as they marveled at the lack of fatalities.
"We must be the luckiest country and luckiest set of people in the world to escape so lightly," said Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy, who said more than 30 people were taken to the hospital. Only three of those had to be admitted for a broken leg, bumps, cuts and bruises.
The Caribbean Airlines plane had left John F. Kennedy International Airport Friday evening and made a stop in Trinidad before landing in Guyana. The airline said it was carrying 157 passengers and six crew members.
Geeta Ramsingh, 41, of Philadelphia, recalled how applause at the arrival quickly "turned to screams."
"The plane sped up as if attempting to take off again. It is then that I smelled gas in the cabin and people started to shout and holler," she said.
When the plane crumpled to a stop, Ramsingh said she hopped onto the wing and then onto the dirt road outside the runway fence.
"A fellow who was trying to escape as well mistakenly jumped on my back and that is why my knees are bruised," she said. "So I am in pain, but very thankful to be alive."
Nobody had yet showed up to rescue her, "but a taxi driver appeared from nowhere and charged me $20 to take me to the terminal. I had to pay, but in times of emergencies, you don't charge people for a ride," she said, sitting on a chair in the arrival area surrounded by relatives. She was returning to her native country for only the second time in 30 years.
Adis Cambridge, 42, of Guyana, said she felt the thump of a hard landing but did not think much of it until seconds later.
"I realized that everything was on top of me, people and bags. I was the second to last person to get off that plane in the dark," she said, surrounded by her two young children who had come to the airport to meet her after a brief holiday in the U.S.
"I hit my head on the roof. It was so scary," she said, and described jumping from the wing to the dirt road below as crews with flashlights and beams from fire engines searched for passengers.
"I thought I would have died. I just started to cry," she said.
The plane came to rest off the end of the 7,400-foot (2,200-meter) runway at Cheddi Jagan International Airport, which sits on a ridge in forested region just south of the oceanfront capital of nearly 300,000 people.
Authorities struggled at first to remove passengers without adequate field lights and other emergency equipment.
The plane stopped a little short of a 200-foot (60-meter) ravine that could have resulted in dozens of fatalities, said President Bharrat Jagdeo.
"We are very, very grateful that more people were not injured," said Jagdeo, who came to the crash site before dawn.
George Nicholas, Caribbean Airlines chairman, told reporters that officials with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board are scheduled to arrive Sunday in Guyana to take over the investigation. He said investigators from Guyana and Trinidad, the airline's base, will help.
He said the airline is arranging for counselors to meet with passengers.
Authorities temporarily closed the Guyana airport, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded and delaying dozens of flights. The main terminal reopened late Saturday morning to only a couple of small planes, including a LIAT airline bound for Barbados, said Orin Walton, a local representative for the Antigua-based carrier.
The crash of Flight 523 is the worst in recent history in Guyana, and only one of the few serious incidents involving the Trinidad-based airline. It is the single largest carrier in the region, operating at least five daily flights.
[via LAtimes]
There was a time when Joe Jonas was rumored to be an opener for Britney Spears on her Femme Fatale Tour. Well, it seems that rumor turned out to be true — for one date, at least. Jonas tweeted Friday (July 29) that he's opening for Spears at her August 5 stop in New Jersey.
"This just in ... I will be performing at the @BritneySpears concert in NJ on Aug 5," the Jersey native wrote. Just last week, it was announced that DJ Pauly D will also appear on several dates of the tour, which also features Nicki Minaj, Nervo and Jessie and the Toy Boys.
Jonas also shared in the same tweet that the release date for his forthcoming debut album has been delayed. He added, "And get ready for #FastLife in stores Oct. 11."
Fast Life was originally slated to hit stores September 6, but fans will have to wait an additional few weeks to hear what the middle Jonas Brother has up his sleeve on the long-simmering solo project.
Jonas was recently spotted in Paris shooting the music video for the album's second single, "Just In Love With You." He was seen getting cozy with a model at various locations in the City of Lights. The song is a follow-up to his single "See No More," written by Chris Brown.
While fans might have to wait a little longer to hear what Jonas has been working so hard on, he has made it clear that this album is all about them. "I was really excited," he told MTV News about hearing fans' comments about his first solo song. "I love the world we live in where you can know what people are thinking right away."
One can predict that, CIOs, like Ulysses, will eventually pass into calm waters-the future in which new processes and products will replace the legacy activities that make up today's IT world. By post-cloud, I mean when cloud is no longer an option to be compared with today's IT conventions, when cloud computing has become the accepted, standard way of doing things. today, I hear many individuals opining that software vendors "won't allow" the shift to cloud computing to erode their pricing or profitability. Within certain sectors of people involved in cloud computing, there is lots of discussion of Jevon's Paradox, which holds that cost reductions in a good or service, rather than reducing total spend, actually increase it. With transparency of cost will come a deployment decision approach in which cost is one of several factors (including privacy, compliance, application bandwidth/latency requirements, and so on) that determine whether an application is deployed internally or externally.
Along those lines, the biggest challenge IT organizations will find on their road to the post-cloud world is legacy systems. These systems represent an enormous drag on the ability of IT to align with the demands of business users who want a partner in developing new IT-infused offerings. For the post-cloud world, it won't be enough to manage legacy applications with as little additional spend as possible. Even with low additional investment, these applications carry a cost structure of maintenance, etc., far higher than today's offerings. Too many people think of cloud computing as virtual machines on demand.
The post-cloud IT organization will rely heavily on PaaS, using an internal or external organization to manage the underlying functionality and infrastructure. people who know how to build business offerings, can integrate multiple applications into the new one, can adroitly implement calls to external APIs and services will be in high, high demand. This kind of application development is akin to being a general contractor, assembling a set of internal and external components and services to deliver functionality. With the shift of IT investment toward apps, there will be a shortage of people who can create post-cloud apps, so as a cloud CIO, start thinking about your strategy to obtain this talent. These people fail to comprehend how rapidly the world is moving beyond the virtual machine as the unit of application deployment.
Facebook wants to give you $500. But first you have to help the social network locate flaws in its infrastructure.
Facebook wants you to crush the bugs plaguing its online infrastructure – and it is willing to pay you a substantial amount of cash if you can. In an open letter published today, Facebook reps invited researchers to pick through its site, and look for errors that "could compromise the integrity or privacy of Facebook user data," including scripting flaws and "remote code injections." Your reward? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $500.
In order to qualify for the bounty, users will have to abide by the Facebook "Responsible Disclosure" agreement, which asks researchers to "give [Facebook] a reasonable time to respond to your report before making any information public and make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data and interruption or degradation of our service during your research," etc.
Translation: If you find a problem with Facebook, let Facebook know, and give them time to fix that problem, instead of taking the problem straight to the court of public opinion. To help corral all these bug reports, Facebook is creating a portal for so-called White Hat researchers; as incentive, Facebook has already posted the names of folks who have already registered a "responsible" disclosure.
Sounds pretty good, right? But there are a few caveats: These bugs have to be native to the Facebook site, and not a third-party researcher. (FarmVille problems don't apply.) Also, Fcebook is offering only one bounty for each bug; being late to the party won't count for anything. Of course, as Dan Goodin notes over at the Register, the bulk of folks cashing in on the Facebook bounties aren't going to be casual users. They are going to be weathered Web hands.
"The move comes as good news to legions of researchers who spend considerable time and expertise finding and reporting serious vulnerabilities in the websites and software they use," Goodin writes. "More often than not, they receive little more than a public acknowledgement in return. Microsoft, Oracle and virtually every other software manufacturer and website steadfastly refuse to pay for private bug reports, even though their products also benefit from it."
Gunning for the Facebook cash? Drop us a line in the comments section. In the meantime, sign up for our free weekly newsletter, which arrives every Wednesday.
A village with 58 households who had never seen a light bulb in their house filled with light. Children no longer studying by candlelight or burning wood.
Source: ecopreneurist
Installation of the micro hydro plants has multiple impacts on the lives of rural population. In rural areas
where people typically depend on forest wood for fuel, micro hydro power can diminish the environmental degradation caused by cutting trees as well as reduce health risks such as respiratory and eyes infections. Micro hydro plants also give economically and environmentally sound options by creating green jobs in the areas where people have scarcity of income generation.
Northern parts of Pakistan are good examples of the viability of these projects or rural and hard to reach locales. They are especially suited to area with plentiful sources of water but which lack facility of electricity connection from the national grid due to extremely hard terrain. Experience from installation of micro-hydro power plants shows that investments in this field are not only economical, but also exciting in terms of new jobs for local communities and service providers. The micro hydro power plants can provide small scale business opportunities for both the local companies as well as to local communities.
A small 15 KV capacity plant can easily provide hydro electricity to 60 to 80 households in a hard, hilly location. A locally made turbine costs 200,000 to 300,000 PKR (2,381- 3,571 USD) to install. The small project also needs distribution lines and polls to supply electricity to the households. In addition, two people can be easily trained to maintain the plant locally. A village with 60 to 80 households can collect monthly cash saving of 4,000 PKR (48 USD) by collecting 50 PKR (less than 1 USD) from each household, which will be enough to pay the monthly salaries to two local persons @ 1,000 PKR (12 USD) in a village. There are no expenses on recurring costs such as fuel or monthly billing, so communities are able to net up to 24, 000 PKR (286 USD) per year. A small shop for electricity appliance such as light bulbs, switch boards, radio and even television, etc. can also provide income generation opportunities at local level.
Farming communities are also able to utilize the water of hydro power plant in number of ways. Water can be diverted from the plant to fields for activities like kitchen gardening, multi cropping and fish ponds. This is particularly beneficial in areas which mainly depend upon rain water for conventional crops production. In Pakistan, where unexpected monsoon rains and flooding result in lose of human lives and precious assets every year, micro hydro power plants give an excellent source for disaster mitigation through storage of rain and river water, particularly in the northern parts of the country. Experts are of the view that due to a lack of water storage and rain water harvesting arrangements, excessive rains triggered flash floods in Pakistan this monsoon season that gave less time to the people in KPK province to evacuate from flood inundated areas.
Micro hydro power is one of the best means of enterprise development for local communities and investment for green investors. Investment in micro hydro power production can be seen as a means to produce green and sustainable entrepreneurs and reduce the risks of investment losses.
