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The government-run research and development wing is targeting to conduct the first trial of the tractor within next one year at its Durgapur facility in West Bengal.PTI | August 21, 2019, 21:38 IST
Currently, the product is at minimum requirement stage
Guwahati: CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute on Wednesday said it is developing a small powered electronic tractor, which will be the cheapest in Indian market at little over Rs 1 lakh.
The government-run research and development wing is targeting to conduct the first trial of the tractor within next one year at its Durgapur facility in West Bengal.
"We are working on to develop a battery operated small tractor of 10 HP power. We are looking to make a less weight product, which is efficient for farmers having smaller land parcels," CSIR-CMERI Director Harish Hirani said at a press conference here.
Currently, the product is at minimum requirement stage and the researchers are looking to have the first successful test run in the next one year, he added.
"The tractor will be equipped with a lithium battery. We are at present looking at the strength of the battery to run a 10 HP tractor. On one full charge, the tractor will run for one hour," Hirani said.
Asked about the cost of the tractor, he informed that CSIR-CMERI is trying to develop it with a production cost of Rs 1 lakh per unit.
"However, this may not be the sale price. Usually the company, which procures the technology from us, sells it with a premium. For example, our Swaraj tractors were developed for Rs 1.35 lakh a unit, but it is sold at around RS 2 lakh," the director explained.
He said CSIR-CMERI is investing around Rs 30 lakh to develop the battery operated tractor for the Indian market.
On charging the tractors, Hirani they are working on to make solar charging stations in farmlands for uninterrupted work by the farmers.
"We are planning to install solar panels in the field for the farmers, which will have battery charging points. With an extra battery, the agriculture work by the tractor can go on for the whole day," he added.
CSIR-CMERI is known for developing the 'Swaraj' and 'Sonalika' brand of tractors, which are sold by different companies across the country.
While 'Swaraj' is owned by Mahindra & Mahindra, 'Sonalika' is produced and marketed by International Tractors Ltd.
The research institute has developed various post- harvest technologies for washing, slicing and drying of produce and have installed them in many North Eastern states
September 23, 2019 Partha Roy 0 Comments
The street lighting is one of the important requirement for all of us today as it provides us safety and an assistance to mobility during the dark hours. The different street lighting systems are being used by different municipalities and high way or roads, but all of them face the identical problems− high consumption of electricity and difficulties to identify the faults of lighting network.
Scientists of CSIR-CMERI came up with an affordable technological solution that saves significant amount of energy along with easy identification of faults in street lights named −Smart Dimmable LED Street Lighting Technology. The key feature of the technology is that it automatically increases the brightness of street lights when a pedestrian or bicycle or caris moving or present in the street and goes back to predefined diming state when none is present. The technology works in combination of the advanced motion sensors with dimmable LED drivers that makes on-demand dynamic lighting through adjustment of intensity of individual street lights that can vary from 10% to 100%. It softly enhances the brightness of forward lights so that the pedestrians or bicycles or cars get enough light well in advance. This ensures safety and comfort of pedestrian. Additionally, it automatically switches ON the street lights in the evening and OFF in the dawn, without the need for human intervention. Further, it is tolerant from undesirable trigger in light demand when animals such as cats, dogs etc.,passes by.
Prof. Harish Hirani, Director, CSIR-CMERI, informed that CSIR-CMERI has already deployed this technology in CSIR-CMERI’s residential colony by converting 50 numbers of LED based street lights into energy efficient smart street lights, and it was observed during the trials that up to 60% energy savings is possible compared to the conventional LED based street lights.
Prof. Hirani further added that it has a feature to automatically identify the faulty street lights and alerts the maintenance engineer through SMS. This feature greatly reduces the need for visual inspections and saves significant amount of time of the maintenance engineers. This technology is configurable to work in standalone as well as in networking mode and can be combined to work with CSIR-CMERI’s Solar Tree Technology.
CSIR-CMERI has transferred the Smart Dimmable LED Street Lighting Technology to M/s Koley Engineering Works, Howrah, WB on 21 September 2019.