Malaysia to support explore alternative energy

THE Help Sri Lanka Consortium and Muslim Aid (Sri Lanka office) carried out a practical demonstration of the use of solar power and other energy efficient appliances for domestic purposes such as cooking and electricity on January 30, 2006, at The Sama Institution, Thalangama.

High Commissioner for Malaysia Nazirah Hussain was the chief guest at this demonstration and expressed her support for such energy saving measures to be rolled out by Muslim Aid and its local partners in Sri Lanka.

The Rotary Club of North America for provision to tsunami housing donated about 200 portable solar power cookers and two village solar ovens.

In addition to this several locally designed solar cookers, wood gas cookers and solar dryers were on display.

Muslim Aid Country Representative, Amjad Mohamed-Saleem reflected on the need to change people's attitudes in non-renewable energy. 'In the light of increasing global oil prices, non-renewable energy is becoming unsustainable.

There is a need to look at other alternatives. One of the natural resources that Sri Lanka is blessed with is sun. This should be harnessed and made available, particularly in the North and East of the country where infrastructure is poor.

Whilst already being used for lighting, cooking food is a new venture and should be explored. Food that is cooked using solar power is tastier and healthier since it only involves natural juices and no additives.'

The demonstration consisted of cooking rice, lentil curry, boiling eggs and baking bread. 45 minutes was taken to cook 10 pots of rice, 30 minutes to cook 7 pots of lentil curry and 20 minutes to boil 5 eggs. The village solar ovens were used to bake 10 loaves of bread which took half an hour.

Mohamed-Saleem further commented 'The village solar oven has a capacity to cook for 1,000 people at a single time. It can also encourage village based industries such as baking bread.

This is an ideal type of low cost livelihood for a village.

The capacity of such devices to reduce the dependence on fossil based fuels is enormous. This could mean savings of thousands of Rupees on gas bills which for the consumers cannot be ignored.

What we are hoping to do is to carry out more demonstrations of these around the country to the general public, civil society, INGOs and Government in an attempt to get them to think outside the box.

"We are also looking to encourage would be inventors to come forward with their ideas on this in an attempt to take this discussion forward particularly in adopting the design of kitchens for the use of solar power", Saleem said.