Would you like to live in a home that can create electricity and not need any grid connection? Would you like to live in a house that does not depend on the municipal water supply? Would you like to live in a home with its waste management and own biogas generation system and not need a regular LPG connection? Would you like to live in a home that does not depend on a sewer line connection? Would you like to explore various fun places in such a home without relying on a fuel station? Would you like to live in a Zero Emission, a sustainable home that causes minimal damage to the environment?
Solar Store, Lucknow, India, which is into consultancy, manufacturing, and renewable energy solutions since 2008, offers the Fuel Cell Caravan – The Home of The Future. Its Proprietor Mr. Yogi Tripathi is a mechanical engineering graduate from Pune University who later went to the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, for his Master’s in Photovoltaics and Solar Energy.
Did you know a 500 MW (1 MW = 1,000 KW) solar thermal power plant burns 250,000 kgs of coal in 1 hour? A city like New Delhi requires some 4,000 MW of electricity. An average city home comes with a 5KW grid connection. Of the 200,000 MW of electricity produced in India, some 80% comes from coal-fired plants. According to data shared by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, India’s total fuel consumption stood at 194.63 million tonnes (mt) during 2019-2020, down from 214.13 mt in 2018-2019. One million (10^6) tonnes equals 1 billion (10^9) kilograms. Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG or cooking gas) consumption stood at 27.59 mt, almost 5 percent higher than last year.
As seen from above, the above artificial system of housing, electricity production, transport fuel is unsustainable. As per studies from British Petroleum, the earth’s oil & gas reserves are expected to last only around 40 years. The electricity consumption on air conditioning in a caravan is a fraction of what is used in an average city home because the caravan body is much smaller in size. Besides, the caravan walls are very well insulated for water consumption, a city home of 4 uses around 125 liters of water per person per day. In the caravan, the water consumption per day is only approximately 5-10 liter of water per person. The caravan roof can also collect rainwater. The fuel cell caravan using solar panels creates its electricity and thus does not depend on the grid. It’s a two-storied structure with a bottom designed as an office and bedroom on top. It can also travel some 1,000 km using hydrogen fuel cells electric drive train which does not cause environmental pollution. Hydrogen will come from onboard electrolyzers using solar panels. Other facilities offered in the caravan include automated cooking, which can make 2,000 dishes. This caravan has high export potential and is being offered for Rs 15 crore, and Yogi seeks to mobilize the funds via crowd funding over his website www.fuelcellcaravan.com.
