Another Nepali Wedding

I've just come back form the shortest visit I've ever taken to Nepal. All the times I have stayed in Nepal, I've lived at my friend Bidur's house in Lalitpur, to the south of the Kathmandu Valley. The youngest daughter in the family was getting married to an officer in the Nepali Army. As she was by all effects my own sister, I went to the wedding.

I found a cheap ticket via Delhi, a  route I was loathe to take as last time I did it meant sitting outside Delhi airport for 8 hours until I could check in for my flight. However, I was assured that there was now an all new transit terminal and I could just transit as I would through the Gulf. At Heathrow, I became rather excited as we pulled in as I could see the Qantas A380 sitting on the tarmac. When I had checked in and went through to departures there were a further 2 - Emirates and Singapore - sat there too. I was so excited I phoned my Dad. And Hannah. And my friends. (There is a reason for the total geekyness, I used to work on the A380 stress calcs when I was in Atkins.)

Being an airplane geek…

The flight to Kathmandu was nothing spectacular, Delhi airport was how it was promised with a clean and rather pleasant terminal. But the approach into Kathmandu is never normal. On our descent into Kathmandu the Himalaya poked up through the clouds, like stone icebergs floating in the sky, beautiful but deadly. I had so often flown into Kathmandu, but it had always been cloudy, this was the first time I had seen the mountains and I have to say I was lost for words.

The Himalaya on the approach to Kathmandu (can you tell the mountains from the clouds?)

When I arrived at the house, preparations for the wedding were well under way. All the furniture and electrical goods had been bought, they had been shopping to buy clothes for the new in-laws, family were arriving from the southern Terai plains and food was being prepared. Saru was there with her son, whom I had christened Bob. He had grown a lot since I had seen him last...

Bob - 1 year ago

Bob - this year...

I met an old Atkins colleague of mine, Saz, in Boudhanath, near where he was working. He had been in Nepal for 3 months or so, and was now moving on to Thailand. It was interesting to hear his impression of Nepal, the good bits and not so good.

The day before the wedding, I went to the groom's house with Achut, the Priest, a neighbour carrying some trays with gifts for the family. The taxi wound its way to the bride's new house, through fields and up hills. We arrived and gave the trays over to the groom's family before being fed and returning back home. In the afternoon, we went to the party palace where the wedding would take place to build the little temple, around which tomorrow's ceremony would be based.

Building the little temple - leaves, leaves and more leaves…

The day of passed in a bit of a blur, there were many different little ceremonies involving just the groom, just the bride and the couple together. I was very humbled to be able to take part, washing their feet at one point and attempting to carry the groom - which I failed at, so just walked with. I think the story is best told in photos, so here are a selection. I'm afraid i can't really expand on the meaning or reason behind any of the different parts of the puja but I'm there are guides that can explain it such as here.

Rachhu before the wedding, dressed in her red sari.

After moving to the wedding venue, the groom's party appears with trays covered in food, clothes, fruit and spices.

The groom arrived in a horse and carriage, as he was an Nepal Army Officer.

The bride and groom together

The groom's first puja ceremony

The beginning of the washing of the feet.

My turn to wash the bride and groom's feet. As part of this, wash the palms of the hand, top of the feet and then splash water over your head that has been dripped over their feet before drinking a little of the water as well. Then the tika is added to on the foreheads, whilst saying a prayer for the couple.

A puja for the whole of the bride's family with a shell.

Time to eat - there was lots of food laid on, Bibek managed to eat 7 ice creams…

After eating the bride and groom sit for some more puja, this time at the little temple we made the previous day.

The bride throws rice on to the fire, leading her husband around the little temple.

More puja sat down

Adding of the sindur powder

More puja sat down - note they have now changed positions though…

A game, where the younger relatives, normally girls, of the bride hide the groom's shoes to get money from him…

Achut carrying his sister around the little temple and the horse and carriage. I was supposed to carry the groom but failed - my excuse was that he was a little too short and I had to bend down a long way. Don't believe me? Damnation…

Leaving in the horse and carriage.

I returned to the UK a couple of days later, with a slightly poorly stomach but the knowledge that I'd be back back again soon. 

A bit of a strange thing happened on my way home though. Transiting through Delhi again, I went to the toilet. The man in the cubicle next to me was using a lot of water from the little tap next to the toilet, meant for washing yourself after doing your business. The floor in my cubicle was getting very wet. I realised that he was taking a shower there, as I looked down at the floor one time the reflection of a naked Indian man greeted me. I didn't look down again, needless to say. This was confirmed when a bar of soap shot into my cubicle quickly followed by a soapy had to retrieve it. I was a bit unsure whether to laugh or to feel violated. Maybe a suggestion for Indra Gandhi Airport - install some showers in the departures!

SAM

Inconsistency

Firstly, a bit of exciting news. I got an email from the organisers of WREC a week ago saying that I was awarded the best paper in the hydropower applications section of the conference, which was fantastic news. I've now been invited to write up the paper for Renewable Energy Journal, which I'll do over the coming weeks.

Notice on WREC Website for best papers

Certificate for best paper in hydropower applications at WREC

I wish sometimes things would be a bit simpler. I've been doing a lot of testing recently, and by that I mean sitting in the lab hours on end recording torque and speed readings at different positions. Each run of the turbine I do takes about half an hour, when you allow for getting the right flow rate to produce the right head at the nozzle, then waiting for all the air to purge from the system before actually recording the data, which may only take about 10 minutes or so. However, I have managed to be fairly productive, and got all the variables extreme testing that I wanted to do done. I then went on to consistency testing and found that my results are fairly consistent, less than 5% variation which is quite good. But this has also shown a problem. During the initial testing I managed to get a maximum efficiency of about 85%, during the extremes testing this was down to 80% and now during this consistency testing I've got up to 88%. Why is this variation happening?

Well, I think I've found what it is due to, slight changes in position. With the jet a little bit too high, the efficiency drops off quickly, and with my aiming system, I've not been able to be more accurate in position than about 5mm. I've also found that all the pipe I have is slightly bowed, so when it is rotated about its clamped position it gives hits the cups in different positions. Now I know what's going on, I can at least fix the rotation of the pipe and so should be able to make this more consistent. It is quite frustrating though…

Photo of the testing as the jet hits the cup

I've decided to look at the angle the jet hits the cup at as well, an reduced angle would mean increased change in momentum at the cup giving more torque and power, but may have an adverse effect in terms of how the jet interacts with the cup, as it may cut it off earlier. Whereas, with an increased angle there will be less momentum of the water in the direction of rotation, but it may be able to enter the cup better, ensuring more of the water works towards generating the power. So, I'll have to do these experiments, a further set of 24.

A couple of third year undergraduates here had done some work on cup design and had designed what they thought would be a more efficiency cup, so I had this rapid prototyped and tested it against the standard cups. We got a good step change in efficiency. Unfortunately, however, I managed to break them, I didn't design out all the stress razors, and the cups fractured along one of the plastic layers which is really frustrating. But still, a bit positive that it provided an increase in efficiency.

Rapid prototyped cups

Comparison with bought in cups

I've been busy outside uni as well, being me. I was in Paris at the beginning of the month for my friend Olly's 'this-isn't-a stag-party-it's-more-of-a-pre-wedding-bash'. There are three of us best men, but as we're all fairly quiet it wasn't a raucous bash. In fact Olly organised it himself - and we went out to a restaurant to eat from their tasting menu - 5 courses with 5 different wines. The food was amazing, pricey too. Then I spent a week being backstage at the Redgrave for Sweet Charity. It was fantastic fun, I do enjoy doing things that are completely different from my day job, and this certainly was. However, it did mean I spent the week being totally knackered! The day after it all finished, Hannah did the Race for Life [race for life] in Bath and so I stood around in the rain for a couple of hours watching people walk and run around 5kms. I think they managed to raise a lot of money, so that was brilliant.

Eating the tasting menu at a good (but pricey) restaurant in Paris (L-R me, Olly - the groom, Olly's brother Andrew)

I'm off to Nepal now for a week, my Nepali sister is getting married so I'm off to be at that. I actually have a trip planned for the middle of July too, that time is for a month, but I had bought the tickets before I knew about the wedding, and I have to be back for the beginning of July for Olly's wedding. All go still!

SAM

Back to work…

After the excitement of being in Sweden, the last couple of weeks have been fairly boring. Work has been mainly consisted of testing, I've been doing a more accurate test regime, looking at the extremes of all my variables to see which are most important and which may affect the efficiency of the turbine most. To do this, I've had to modify the rig slightly, so I can more accurately measure and move angles and positions. I've a series of 12 tests to do now, which will map out the combination of variables that is most important. This should be finished in the next week hopefully…

I've also been getting further frustrated by the analytical modelling. I still seem to unable to model it using the different physical effects that are quantifiable. I've tried another method over the last couple of weeks, using the cup as the stationary coordinate system and sweeping a stream of water particles in and out, but that still brings up inconsistencies which I really can't get my head around. I think the only option I really have open to me now is use experimentally derived constants to match the theory with the experiments. Definitely not ideal and not really what I wanted to do, but I will do this so that I can have a model to progress on to the next stage and then try again later to derive the whole thing from geometry and fluid mechanic equations.

I've also been looking at the electrical side of the project a little more. At WREC I met someone who presented a paper on parallel connected inverters and he gave me some pointers about how to model these types of systems, so I've done a lot of reading on these and the concept of virtual impedance control schemes for inverters.

On the more fun side of things, I've been getting ready for another musical, this time Sweet Charity with Bristol Musical Comedy Club (BMCC). This is the first time for a long time I've worked with a new company, which is fun, although getting to know how different people do things is quite hard at first. BMCC don't have a parish hall that they're based in, so perform in professional theatres, this time it's the Redgrave Theatre. This is going to be another new experience for me, setting up and working in a proper professional theatre. I've spent the last few weeks visiting the rehearsals and building some of the set, which has been good fun - I enjoy getting my hands dirty, it makes sitting at a computer for the rest of the day more bearable.

I went down to Cornwall for a few days for my Mum's birthday, which was great. I really haven't visited home as much as I should have over the last few months, so it was fantastic for all my family to be in one place again.

Mum and her birthday cake (don't count the candles!)

The next few weeks are going to be fairly hectic I think. Alongside all the work I'm doing at uni, I'm off to Paris for my friend's 'this-isn't-a stag-party-it's-more-of-a-pre-wedding-bash', then there's the performance of Sweet Charity in the first week of June, straight after coming back from Paris, then after a week's rest and relaxation, I'm off to Nepal for a short visit to go to Rachhu's wedding before returning for three weeks and then back to Nepal for my annual month-long trip. I've got to try and wrap up all the turbine work before I head away as they're going to be doing some modifications in the Hydrolab, which is annoying. Finger's crossed it all goes well!

SAM

World Renewable Energy Congress

I've just got back from the World Renewable Energy Congress in Linköping, Sweden. I have to say, it didn't start particularly well. I thought I had printed everything I needed to, but found I hadn't so on the Saturday morning had to go back into the office and print out my ticket. That was where I noticed that my flight was in fact 3 hours earlier than I thought it was going to be. Dope. Then, in the evening, Hannah pointed out that I was coming back on the Saturday instead of the Friday I thought I was. Not a great start.

The aircraft lined up in Schiphol airport, Amsterdam (for those aircraft spotters I flew on a KLM cityhopper Fokker 70)

However, I got to Linköping and after an extortionate taxi ride of nearly £18 for just a 5 minute ride I found my hotel and collapsed on the bed as it was almost midnight. However, I forgot that Sweden is very far north. So far north in fact that the sun rose around 3am. Argh. I'm never very good at sleeping when the sun is up. I headed the next morning for the conference centre. Looking at the map I had been given, I thought it was a good 30 minute walk, however, it was only 10 minute walk. Apparently I walked through the city centre as well, it was quite small but very clean, green and friendly.

The conference centre, with the conference banner outside

I registered and received my obligatory bag which was really rather ugly - a black laptop case with a orange flap. I had looked at the program for the talks during my stop-over in Amsterdam and so worked out what I was going to do for the first day at least. I went into the main hall to get a seat for the opening presentations. There, was a long haired man playing a violin type instrument on its side. It was really quite pleasant folk music and relaxed me. The conference began with the entrance of Princess Victoria, the Crown Princess of Sweden. Then there were several really interesting talks from some high level politicians and policy makers. The most memorable for me was from Alan AtKisson who was advocating that the richest 10% of the world should donate $100 a month to provide the investment for environmental projects that would keep global warming within a 2 degree temperature rise. It gave me a lot to think about - would I donate £60 to save the world? Would you?

A man playing some Swedish Folk Music

A blurry shot of the Swedish Crown Princess (the one with the red circle around her)

For the next few days I attended several talks - ranging from wave and tidal generators to photovoltaics, energy efficiency to policy issues. Julian, one of my supervisors, was presenting a paper on powering rope pumps using renewable energy. It was a final year research project he had supervised and was now being implemented in Tanzania. For me, these type of talks were the most interesting, those that were more than just an academic exercise.

Julian presenting about rope pumps

On the third day of the conference there were industrial visits we could go on to local projects and plants. I went to a Tekniska Verken site that incinerated waste and provided electricity and heat for Linköping and the surrounding villages. It was really interesting to see what Swedes did, how they provided district heating so people didn't need individual boilers in their houses. It seemed a really good solution to some tricky problems. I also visited the Linköping Biogas site, where they were producing biogas from the local sewage works and food waste. This was used then to give compressed natural gas - methane - for cars. I really enjoyed listening to how the Swedes were dealing with the environmental issues that were facing the planet. By 2030, they hope that all of Sweden will be totally renewable, quite a challenge, but they seem to be well on the way.

Tekniska Verken Incinerator plant

Linköping Biogas Anaerobic Digesters

The next day was my presentation. I had spent the previous night practising, and I had it down to 12 minutes. However, when I started I found it taking a lot longer. By the time I was half way through the talk, my time was almost up. So, I rushed through the last few slides, focussing on the testing that we are doing currently. I had some questions on the efficiency, the size, but none were that taxing or trying to catch me out, which was great. I sat through the other hydropower presentations, breathed a sigh of relief that mine was all over. After our session had finished, I started to chat with several people that had been listening and presenting. I found that there were several people that were interested in the technology we were developing. I hope that some of the contacts I've made will be useful, and I can be useful to them, in the future.

Presenting at WREC

The final days were great and relaxing. In all I went to 47 presentations and many keynote talks from experts, policy makers and industrialists and made a large number of really good contacts.

Lawrence Kazmerski from NREL talking about PV with a US Army Mobile PV panel

As I had an extra day in Linköping I decided to explore. I went to the museum just next to the conference centre which showed Swedish life a few hundred years ago. The highlight of the museum for me was the chance to try on an old warrior helmet, I felt just like a Rohan warrior!

Me in a Rohan-esque helmet (notice how big the williamson nose looks...)

Here are a few more photos from around Linköping:

The cathedral

Gamla Linköping (old Linköping)

Rowing along the canal

Eating an ice-cream outside the cathedral in Linköping

I had a great time at the conference, it was fantastic to talk to people and find that they'd been coming across similar problems to me. Sweden was a very beautiful and relaxing place. The journey home was a lot less eventful than the one out fortunately.

Flying over Sweden

SAM

Sweden Bound

So, WREC starts tomorrow, so I've been preparing my presentation over the last week. As I've been doing the living below the line challenge I've not been the most happy and smiley person this week, the lack of food has made me slightly more grumpy than normal (many would say this is a great feat as I'm fairly grumpy most of the time anyway!) and so the pressure to get a good and coherent presentation together hasn't helped the situation. However, after a couple of iterations during the week and a practise on Friday I'm quite happy with what I have. I'm going to be giving my presentation in the first hydropower session of the conference on Thursday morning, which means I'll have most of the week to see how everyone else does theirs and see what the style and level of the presentations are. I've also been thinking about the awkward questions that I'm likely to be asked so that I can have useful responses to them. The questions I think most likely are:

- Why don't people normally use these turbines at low head as they're not new technology?

- How big will the turbine be?

- What is the advantage of this compared with the axial flow turbine (the normal turbine used at low head pico ranges)?

- What about using pumps as turbines?

I've also learnt a bit more about what you need to do in a conference to present your work. You don't necessarily need to give all the data that's in the paper, in fact you can give more data than the paper and any new information that you've learnt. I thought I'd be able to only present what I'd initially written and so focussed my presentation on that, however I've been told that people aren't that interested in that, more what you're doing now and what you're going to be doing. Let's see how it goes…

As well as preparing for the conference I've been doing some further testing on the turbine. I've a new nozzle - 20mm diameter jet, which produced a fantastic 85% efficiency on the turbine. I have to say I breathed a sigh of relief. I was beginning to get concerned that my turbine choice I had made was fundamentally wrong. So the good efficiency measure is great news. Now we have to go forward with a organised testing regime, covering all the possible variables in the design - jet velocity (head, flow rate), jet inclination angle, jet impact location and so on - and see what affects the efficiency most, finding the optimum location. I'm still struggling with matching my model to the results - when I reached 85% the model was fairly close, within a reasonable error, but when the turbine moves away from this optimum point then this consistency with the model drops away dramatically.

So, to combat some of the problems with the model, I've been looking at further improvements, trying to implement some sort of 3D flow in the cup, as I've seen in the experiments that it is certainly not two dimensional flow. To see this yourself, if you put a spoon under a tap, as pictured below, you can see that the flow goes in all directions. This also happens in the turbine. However, form initial runs of this model, it doesn't seem to solve the problem, so I think I may have to come up with a completely new strategy. More frustration definitely!

Spoon and turgo cup under a 'jet' from a tap - see how the flow goes pretty much everywhere!

I've also been looking at some of the electrical building blocks I'll need to use in my system. Firstly the phase locked loop controller, that is used to synchronise two AC signals together. Once this was done, then I used it to control two independent voltage sources to parallel them up - replicating two generators connected together. I've managed to synchronise two units together - as you can see on the graph below:

Trying to synchronise two AC generators

Two problems have appeared though. The time to synchronise is quite long, about half a second, which is not really acceptable. There is also a 100Hz ripple in the frequency, as you can see the line is not at a constant frequency. This would not cause a big problem, but is annoying. I've tried filtering this out, but this causes a slow reaction in the control of the sources. So, these are a couple of problems to overcome.

I've bought my tickets to return to Nepal in July, which I'm really looking forward to. It's been almost a year since I was there last, and I can't wait to see all my friends again and just relax back into the wonderful culture and lifestyle that the Nepali's have. I met up with Tim Mitchell, a member of the Rotary club (Rotary Club) who does a lot of work with the Pahar Trust. The Pahar Trust are an NGO that build schools and medical posts in rural Nepal. They are also interested in electrifying them, and so after the IMechE presentation in March he came to talk to me about using the technology we're looking at to provide power to their schools. This is quite exciting as it could provide the possibility of test sites at the end of the project. So, I'm going to try and meet up with the Project Manager of the Pahar Trust when I'm out in Nepal, and maybe visit some of their projects.

I went home for Easter, as it had been a long time since I had been back to Cornwall. It was great to see my parents again, and Mary came down from up north for a few days, so all the family were together, quite a rare occasion. Hannah and I also decided to take a few days off on May Day bank holiday weekend, as we weren't that keen on watching THE wedding. So we booked a cottage just outside Abergavenny and plotted a weekend of walking, cycling (my choices) and shopping (Hannah's choice). We went to Brecon and found the Nepali shop there - I wanted to buy something, so bought some chiura and muri. Not very exciting, but still necessary. We went walking around the black mountains and climbed Sugar Loaf, which was blowing a gale on the top.

Climbing up sugar loaf

Near our house was Llanthony Priory which was destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid 16th century. It was a very beautiful place to sit and relax, and quite interesting as I'd been reading some books about the dissolution period of British History.

Llanthony Priory

We cycled up the valley we were staying in up to the pass. Doing this we climbed over 300m, which almost killed both of us - I think I definitely need to improve on my fitness. But we had a really good picnic at the top of the pass, and then freewheeled most of the way back down the valley in 45 minutes, when it took us almost 3 hours to cycle up it!

The road to the pass - very very very tiring to reach it, so much quicker to go back down!

On the final day we went for a cycle on the Brecon Monmouth canal, much easier to cycle along and a nice relaxing time. We didn't want to expend too much energy though as we were starting to live below the line at that point, so we wouldn't be able to replace any lost calories with excesses of chocolate, as normal.

So, now I'm just about to head off to Sweden for my first conference. I'm nervous as anything, but looking forward to it too. Sort of!

SAM

Living Below the Line - Some Final Thoughts…

So, this morning we all celebrated by having a fry-up at 7.45am. After 5 days of eating vegetables, pulses and pasta, it was brilliant to be able to eat something with more taste! I was so looking forward to eating that when the food sat in front of me I gobbled it down within just a couple of minutes. I developed a proper food-baby in front of me. However, now it is the afternoon, and I've not actually had to eat anything else so far today, and I doubt I will until tea. So, maybe the reduced portions have done me some good. I just need to learn to not be so greedy I think.

I woke up very early this morning (too excited about the cooked breakfast I think) and started thinking. I could now buy food for a day that costs £1. What other things could I buy for a pound (or thereabouts)? Here's a few interesting things...

• You can get a three-stop-hop on the buses here in Bristol

• You can buy Help! by The Beatles on iTunes

• You can buy 2 first class stamps and have a little change left over (get some penny sweets in!)

• You can buy some posh and very tasty cookies from Tesco (only if they're on offer though…)

• You can buy a lottery ticket, with a 14,000,000 to 1 chance of winning large amounts of money

• You can buy a fluorescent tube

• You could call Nepal for 5 minutes or send 10 texts there

• You could subscribe to The Times online for 24 hours

• Or you could feed yourself

It seems to me that in this world today we don't really realise how much £1 can actually do. It can actually make the difference between eating or not, even in this country. Maybe, I'll make one less bus journey a week, buy one less track from iTunes, not eat so many Tesco/Sainsburys/Coop cookies. Then with that money put it to something that can actually make a difference.

£1 a day = £365 a year. That would make a HUGE difference.

SAM