“Mumma…
.. there’s a lot of construction in India (he has seen more dump trucks, cement mixers, cranes, scoopers, etc than in US already)
.. why is the sky not blue?
.. hello stray dog
.. I want to go in an auto (rickshaw) but why is it so bouncy?
.. why does Rani (housemaid) not sit with us?
.. we live with lots of kinds of animals in India.
.. the ketchup in India tastes better
.. the yoghurt in India tastes better
.. there are cars and Meru cabs (apparently he has missed noticing all the old style cabs so far..)
.. why is (add your choice of location) so dirty?
.. no one cleaned the buffalo after it did the ‘strange’ potty
.. (butt cleaning with water) is the ‘perfect’ way to clean.
“

In addition he has been missing his friends Navya, Rian, Kankan, Anvay, Owen G and Hilbert a lot!!

The reasons are all too typical -
For me it’s 40% family and 40% solar/cleantech opportunity in India and 20% loads of reasons some of which become more pronounced during cricket games, festivals, househelp discussions, patriotism, desiness, and what not
For Hrishi it is almost all family
….and we are hoping that in our own ways we will be able to find a place to stand and feel comfortable about this decision.

We have given ourselves a 2-yr time window – which is somewhat artificial ’cause it depends on the green-card, etc BUT in some ways real because that the amount of time most of our returned friends took to ‘settle-in’.

It’s been a good start to this adventure so far. Fingers crossed!!

After using the computer for a few months, I realized I liked it more than Dell, Thinkpad or any desktop I had used. So decided to buy their shares at ~$50. Continued to buy in small batches for the next year. It’s perhaps the only stock I have made money on. Hrishi has been bugging me to sell them off for last 2-3 years, but my standard response has been ‘Not till Steve Jobs is around’.

The last week, since his death, has been surprisingly teary for me. Feels like an overwhelming loss. Turns out millions of people around the world are surprised by similar feelings. I am not going to attempt to eulogize him. Many words have been written, which perhaps capture his genius better than I ever could. (Onion’s summary was a fav – “Last guy in US who knew what the fuck he was doing”).

But keeping it in the context of my life, in 2001 an guy approached me while I was working on an oil rig in Assam – and asked if Indira Gandhi was my role model. (He had never seen a woman on the oil field, and thought I must be inspired by someone great). I said ‘no’ – but the question stayed with me. “Who is my role model, do I need one, what can I learn?”…

Through IIT and early professional years, I didn’t find anybody that was particularly inspiring. Then I started following Steve Jobs in the last 5 years. Once I read about his work and philosophy – it was easier to answer the ‘role model’ question.
(Although sometimes I wished with his skills, he would take on the difficult social problems as well, and some of his inter-personal skills might not be most noteworthy)

More than the i-stuff, what will continue to inspire me are his authenticity, clarity of thought, guts, focus, visualizing the intersections – of industries, of human psychology with technology, and then ‘making it happen’ like crazy.

The above is a tall package for most people to be or become. I doubt if I’ll see someone like him in my lifetime. It was my privilege to see the show live and would love to share his stories as Hridyan grows older. He was fortunate to have received all the love in his lifetime. But I wish everyday, I could continue to see the magic…..

RIP and thank you, Steve.

For the rest of us, let’s “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

—–
PS: some photos from outside his house in Palo Alto, CA

So here’s what we ended up doing. I got a pinata (fire-truck shaped) for his pre-school class and filled it with small bags of candy and goodies (Uncovered a whole new world of pinata….I don’t think I have ever tried to hit one, but always seemed like a fun activity). All the 3-yr olds at his class tried their hand at breaking it. Teachers tried and loved it too. Check out the video in the picasa-album. Turned out to be quite fun actually…
Did one ‘happy budday’ in his new class with some cupcakes and then another one in his old class, from which he has moved up in the last month.

At home that evening, we invited a few close friends and their more kids and continued the party till late. Lotsa cake, fun and attempts to have adult conversation. For Ridu’s part, he was happy to hang out with Rian, Kanishka and the littlest one, Anvay

Looking forward to a year non-stop chit-chat, fun and health . Happy Birthday Hridyan!!

What really worries me is that constantly being on the clock is physically and mentally tiring. It does not give any time for introspection, for really absorbing what we are learning both professionally and personally. It does not allow us to be spontaneous – to be opportunistic about something interesting like a good movie on TV, or something unplanned and creative. Most of all – I feel I get no time to connect the dots.

I used to complain about ‘not getting enough time to waste’ and did not find many people who echoed the sentiment. But this week itself, two people who I believe ‘get it’ reinforced my ill-formed thoughts. This has certainly encouraged me to try harder for some solid boredom.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/08/wasting-time-is-not-a-waste.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486412642177904.html

I have been involved in the industry since, and a lot has changed since then. Unfortunately not so much for CSP, but a lot more for the competition and the market.

In terms of competition – PV prices are continuing to fall aggressively. There are programs being proposed that aim to bring the cost of PV technology to $1/W in 5 years time-frame. Currently large scale systems are easily between $2.5-$3/Wac (USA). This is terrific for solar energy in general. But CSP technologies have not been able to keep this pace generally, and will not be able to compete on cost alone. Large CSP projects could be cost-effective, but the size comes with its own problems (which brings me to the next point…)

Market (at least in US) has evolved that utilities have become very comfortable with PV plants. The plants are small, come online faster and generally don’t have to deal with the regulatory uncertainty as large CSP plants.

BUT…there are still two strong advantages of CSP and the future would depend on how the industry is able to leverage these strengths. Ultimately, it’s about how CSP can reduce lifecycle cost of electricity generation.

1) Storage: As I mentioned in my previous post, Storage (specifically as heat storage) is a strong differentiator. In the last two years, the cost of storage has become cheaper. Many more plants with the molten salt storage configuration have come online in Spain. A recent 19MW project stores 15-hrs of electricity to give almost ‘baseload’ power on sunny days. There is no electricity storage that is close at this scale in the near term.

2) Dispatchability through Hybridization: CSP lends itself easily to being a part of a hybrid plant. Some options are: Solar-biomass, Solar-geothermal, Solar-coal, Solar-combined cycle, Solar-natural gas hybrid, etc. Essentially anywhere there is requirement for steam, solar thermal can provide it. Most of these combinations improve the economics of the second fuel source as well. These are not cookie-cutter projects, but could be a valuable way to leverage the strength of CSP and provide near base-load plants.

Another advantage stated for CSP is it’s ability to buffer cloud events (which affects PV more drastically) to reduce the variability in the electricity generation- but utilities in US don’t seem to be willing to pay for this. Many other countries are more mindful of the quality of generation and value this benefit. The argument that distributed PV reduces variability by it’s nature of being distributed and small, is strong as well.

Some of the recently announced projects in CSP in US and worldwide, leverage the above aspects and hopefully, should be able to demonstrate the value of this integratable technology. Either way, it’s going to be very interesting next 3-yrs for the industry.

We have been wanting to do this for about 6-months now. I was especially getting frustrated with the potty cleaning routine. It all came together this Memorial Day – when we decided to stay indoors all three days and get this done. We decided to keep him in undies and bear anything that happens. It might have been more of us not being prepared than Ridu . Summer weather and a month of good health for him definitely helped.

Still have to figure out the right way to keep him out of diaper when going to malls, etc. Please share any ideas that might have worked.

It’s been a week and our happiness is still not getting old. Love the fact there are no dirty diapers in the house and we are not killing any trees for that anymore. Life’s just cleaner and much easier!

Every night Hridyan is offered 5-6 ounces of milk. Invariably he will leave about 1/2 an ounce at the end and will not finish it no matter how many tricks we try. Since it was independent of the volume of milk we offered, I stopped fretting about it. Now Hrishi/I finish it instead of leaving it to spoil. When I finish it, he tells me “Mumma I am sharing” and “good job Mummy”

Another example from breakfast time. This has been a very important meal throughout my life and I always enjoyed starting my day quietly, with something nice. Turns out Hridyan has the same feeling about it. Typically I try to stagger mine by a few minutes so I can get the “quiet” part that I mentioned. But that’s obviously too much to ask. He will have to have a few bites from mine (sometimes even forcibly) irrespective of what he’s had. After biting into mine this morning, he tells me “Mumma we are sharing”.

I guess no body ever said sharing has to be equally pleasant to both sides

* Thanks to http://www.fastcompany.com for the image