雅思阅读第069套P3-Low-Cost Lamps Light RuralIndia
Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 27 - 40, which are based on Reading Passage 3below.
Low-Cost Lamps Light Rural India
Until three months ago, life inthis humble village without electricity would come to a halt after sunset.Inside his mud-and-clay home, Ganpat Jadhav's three children used to study inthe dim, smoky glow of a kerosene lamp, when their monthly fuel quota of fourlitres dried up in just a fortnight, they had to strain their eyes using thelight from a cooking fire. That all changed with the installation of low-cost,energy-efficient lamps that are powered entirely by the sun. The lights wereinstalled by the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), an Indian non-governmentalorganisation focused on bringing light to rural India. Some 100,000 Indianvillages do not yet have electricity. The GSBF lamps use LEDs - light emittingdiodes - that are four times more efficient than a normal bulb. After a $55installation cost, solar energy lights the lamp free of charge. LED lighting,like cell phones, is another example of a technology whose low cost could allowthe rural poor to leap into the 21st century.
As many as 1.5 billion people -nearly 80 million in India alone - light their houses using kerosene as theprimary lighting media. The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and - despite beingsubsidised - consumes nearly four per cent of a typical rural Indianhousehold’s budget. A recent report by the Intermediate Technology DevelopmentGroup suggests that indoor air pollution from such lighting media results in1.6 million deaths worldwide every year. LED lamps, or more specifically whiteLEDs, are believed to produce nearly 200 times more useful light than akerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventionalbulb. "This technology can light an entire rural village with less energythan that used by a single conventional 100-watt light bulb,” says DaveIrvine-Halliday, a professor of electrical engineering at the University ofCalgary, Canada and the founder of Light up the World Foundation (LUTW).Founded in 1997, LUTW has used LED technology to bring light to nearly 10,000homes in remote and disadvantaged corners of some 27 countries like India, Nepal,Sri Lanka, Bolivia, and the Philippines.
The technology, which is notyet widely known in India, faces some scepticism here. “LED systems arerevolutionising rural lighting, but this isn’t a magic solution to the world’senergy problems,” says Ashok Jhunjhunwala, head of the electrical engineeringdepartment at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. In a scenario inwhich nearly 60 per cent of India’s rural population uses 180 million tons ofbiomass per year for cooking via primitive wood stoves - which are smoky andprovide only 10-15 per cent efficiency in cooking -Jhunjhunwala emphasises theneed for a clean energy source, not just for lighting but for other domesticpurposes as well. The Indian government in April launched an ambitious projectto bring electricity to 112,000 rural villages in the next decade. However, theremote locations of the village will make reaching this goal difficult. A. K.Lakhina, the chairman of India’s Rural Electrification Corporation, says theIndian government recognises the potential of LED lighting powered by solartechnology, but expressed reservations about its high costs. “If only LEDsweren't imported but manufactured locally,” he says, “and in bulk.”
The lamps installed in nearly300 homes by GSBF cost nearly half the price of other solar lighting systems.Jasjeet Singh Chaddha, the founder of the NGO, currently imports his LEDs fromChina. He wants to set up an LED manufacturing unit and a solar panelmanufacturing unit in India. If manufactured locally, the cost of his LED lampcould plummet to $22, as they will not incur heavy import duties. “We needclose to $5 million for this,” he says. Mr. Chaddha says he has also asked thegovernment to exempt the lamps from such duties, but to no avail. An entrepreneurwho made his money in plastics, Chaddha, has poured his own money into theproject, providing the initial installations free of charge. As he looks tomake the project self-sustainable, he recognises that it is only urban markets-which have also shown an avid interest in LED lighting - that can pay. Therural markets in India cannot afford it, he says, until the prices are broughtdown. The rural markets would be able to afford it, says Mr. Irvine-Halliday,if they had access to microcredit. He says that in Tembisa, a shanty town inJohannesburg, he found that almost 10,000 homes spent more than $60 each oncandles and paraffin every year. As calculations revealed, these families canafford to purchase a solid state lighting system in just over a year of payingper week what they would normally spend on candles and paraffin - if they haveaccess to microcredit. LUTW is in the process of creating such a microcreditfacility for South Africa.
In villages near Khadakwadi,the newly installed LED lamps are a subject of envy, even for those connectedto the grid. Those connected to the grid have to face power cuts up to 6 or 7hours a day. Constant energy shortages and blackouts are a common problem dueto a lack of power plants, transmission, and distribution losses caused by oldtechnology and illegal stealing of electricity from the grid. LED systemsrequire far less maintenance, a longer life, and as villagers jokingly say, “noelectricity bills”. The lamps provided by GSBF have enough power to provide justfour hours of light a day. However, that is enough for people to get their workdone in the early hours of the night, and is more reliable than light generatedoff India’s electrical grid. Villagers are educated by GSBF officials to makethe most of the new lamps. An official from GSBF instructs Jadhav and hisfamily to clean the lamp regularly. “Its luminosity and life will diminish ifyou let the dust settle on it,” he warns them.
SECTION 3: QUESTIONS 27-40
Questions 27-30
For each question, only ONE ofthe choices is correct.
Write the corresponding letterin the appropriate box on your answer sheet.
27The GSBF lamps
Aprovide light for 100,000 Indian villages.
Bare very expensive to install.
Care powered by the sun.
28More than half of India’s population uses
Akerosene as a cooking fuel.
Bbiomass as a cooking fuel.
Csolar power as a cooking fuel.
29In India, the GSBF lamps are too expensivefor most people
Ain rural areas.
Bin urban areas.
Cin all areas.
30The GSBF lamps
Aare not as reliable as electricity fromthe national power grid.
Brequire skill to use.
Conly provide four hours of light a day.
Questions 31-35
Complete the followingsentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each gap.
Another example of cheaptechnology helping poor people in the countryside is 31 _________________
Kerosene lamps and conventionalbulbs give off less 32_________________ than GSBF lamps.
It is unlikely that the Indiangovernment will achieve its aim of connecting 112,000 villages to electricitybecause many villages are 33_________________
GSBF lamps would be cheaper ifit weren’t for 34 _________________
Users need to wipe 35 _________________ from the LED in order to keep it working well.
Questions 36-40
Do the following statementsagree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 36 - 40 on youranswer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN
If there is no information on this
36 _________________ Ganpat Jadhav’s monthly ration of kerosene was insufficient.
37 _________________ Kerosene causes many fires in homes in developing countries.
38 _________________ LED systems could solve the world’s energy problems.
39 _________________ Chaddha has so far funded the GSBF lamp project himself.
40 _________________ Microcredit would help to get more people to use LED lamps.
答案
雅思阅读第069套P3-Low-Cost Lamps Light Rural Indiahttp://www.tuonindefu.com/?p=2522雅思阅读第069套P3:Low-Cost Lamps Light Rural India
