SHUT DOWN VARUNA | ATTACH ALL ILLGAINED WEALTH BACK TO AUROVILLE | LET TNEB SUPPLY ELECTRICITY DIRECTLY |
Government of India - Kindly do the needful so that the power hungry do not use this pandemic of COVID-19 as an excuse to make policies beneficial for themselves
What surprises us is that even during such a pandemic that is affecting the entire world, the Power Corridor of Auroville is busy making its own agenda. Varuna Project is NOT necessary for Auroville especially when they presented the Varuna project claiming to provide free electricity for Aurovilians and to water gardens of Matrimandir (not villages). Varuna has time and again failed to provide proper electricity to residents and Aurovilians cannot work due to power outages. Moreover, the directors of Varuna are foreigners who sit in the Working Committee (Public Office) and clearly into making policies that are beneficial for them. Since most of the residents of Auroville are not interested in reading the finer lines, corruption in Auroville goes on unabated and finally affecting all, even those who say that "they are not interested"
The Varuna project has failed to provide proper forensic audits on their accounts and the Public of India and other Aurovilians have no clue what donations were collected, siphoned, diverted or otherwise. What are the debit and credit so far? And all this has been done behind closed doors by evading tax audits in the name of Autonomy against India!
Indian tax laws are perfect and accounting processes immaculate to ensure Auroville money is not mismanaged. According to analysis and sources, this seemingly ill-gained wealth accumulated by the directors of Varuna (project piggybacking on Auroville) can pay off all electricity bills directly and should be attached by thorough CBI/ ED inquiry and should be used for Auroville. Varuna should direct all the energy of its six wind generators it sells to Karnataka and other places back to Auroville so Auroville is self-sufficient.
Auroville Foundation is a statutory body under the Ministry of HRD, India - why would it need a private limited company with Aurovilian foreigners who are against the charter of Auroville to supply basic necessities of electricity and water to our Indians and villages? Varuna has clandestinely and has been alleged to have stopped basic electricity supply to Villagers and Indians who are inside and around the green belt to arm-twist them. There was a case where they stopped supply of electricity stating the Tamilian's home stay is a commercial resort in green belt - whereas no unit in Auroville has licenses, pays commercial taxes and uses residences to conduct commercial activities for private gain. Why should there be an Aurovilian run Private Firm which produces electricity and sells it to TNEB for a discount on electricity when the Central Government can easily get a better waiver than Varuna can. The Under Secretary of Auroville Foundation well knowing this has assisted in the formation of this complex entity to control the basic necessities of residents of Auroville and Tamil Villagers around for reasons best known to him.
Now using the excuse of Economic Repression due to Corona Virus how can Varuna start charging residents of Auroville? Does this mean that the people who suffer are the common Aurovilians whereas the Power Corridor is making hay even at this time? This shows the Human Unity prevalent in Auroville completely - Hopefully, now the group soul of Auroville has an awakening.
Coming Soon: Economy in Auroville post Covid-19
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Dear Aurovilians,
The economic life in India has come more or less to a standstill. Most factories and businesses are closed. This has drastic consequences for Varuna’s ability to continue the electricity-in-kind scheme of Auroville.
Varuna operates six wind-generators, one of which “wheels” the produced energy into Auroville. This wheeled energy is offset against the energy consumed in Auroville; this reduces the Auroville electricity bill by about 20%. The energy produced by the other five wind generators is sold to spinning mills in Tamil Nadu and hotels in Karnataka; all income is used to pay for the remaining 80% of the electricity-bill of Auroville.
With the spinning mills shutting down and the hotels not faring well, our income from sales will drastically reduce. In this new situation we will not be able to continue with the electricity-in-kind scheme in its entirety as has been done uninterruptedly since 2014.
From April 2020 onwards, the Varuna scheme will only be able to cover a percentage of the Auroville electricity costs – the exact percentage is not yet known – and for the remaining part contributions will need to be made by Aurovilians and Auroville units. We will inform as soon as possible what contribution from each person or unit will be expected.
We are working with other Auroville units and services on a long term solution, which includes the following:
Operating a second wind turbine in wheeling mode under a mechanism known as “group captive”. (See explanation note below).
Giving a big push to installing additional solar PV system capacity (rooftop and ground mounted systems) inside Auroville.
Enabling the sharing of solar PV generated energy by Auroville units and residents, whereby surplus energy produced in one building can be used by another building. This is already happening on a small scale in Auroville, and needs to be enhanced.
These steps will take time. We hope that the scheme can operate again as an integral part of an Auroville in-kind economy in the near future.
Kind regards,
Varuna Team
25-03-2020
Notes:
Wind energy wheeling is a mechanism whereby energy produced by a wind turbine is adjusted with energy consumed. Wheeling can be done only to HT (high tension) service connections. Auroville has one such HT connection to which a large part of the Auroville city area is already connected (the internal Auroville distribution network). Although the migration of buildings and facilities from individual TNEB overhead line connections to the internal distribution network of Auroville is being done as part of the township infrastructure development and not to facilitate wheeling of energy it enables (additional) energy wheeling. The growth of the Auroville internal distribution network also facilitates distributed (rooftop) solar energy generation whereby the surplus generation of one area of Auroville can flow to another area which is connected to the internal network.
Group captive mechanism: Auroville Foundation would become a “group captive partner” to make this happen. With this mechanism not all the energy of a wind turbine needs to be wheeled to Auroville. The unutilised energy can be sold to another partner instead of being sold to TNEB. This would be an interim solution for as long as the energy consumed within the internal network of Auroville cannot be adjusted with the energy produced by two wind turbines.
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