Vizag Port to Run All Its Operations on Solar Power From March

Vizag port in Andhra Pradesh is set to run its entire operations on solar power from next month, its chairman M T Krishna Babu said on Thursday.

Visakhapatnam Port Trust has already commissioned 2MW solar capacity and will add another 8MW by March 20, he said at a roadshow in Hyderabad ahead of Maritime India Summit 2016, to be held in Mumbai in April.

"We will be the first major port in the country to run entire port operations on solar energy," Krishna Babu said, adding VPT has spent Rs. 60 crores to set up the plants.

Devendra K Rai, Director, Union Ministry of Shipping, said the target is to operationalise 135 MW of solar power projects by 2020 in eight major ports - JNPT, Paradip, Kamarajar, Kandla, V O Chidambaranar, Visakhapatnam, Kolkata and New Mangalore.

He said 50MW of wind energy projects are also planned to be developed in V O Chidambaranar, Chennai and New Mangalore ports during the period.

Speaking to PTI, Rai also said that consulting firm McKinsey has submitted a draft National Perspective Plan and made a presentation to Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari yesterday. "It (the draft NPP) will be put on website for feedback very soon.

"This particular plan will guide us for the next 10-20 years as to how the maritime sector as a whole can grow," he said.

Rai added, "We are developing 78 lighthouses (including 34 island lighthouses) as tourist hubs and cruise terminals at Mormugao, Chennai, Mumbai and Cochin."

He said while ports have capacity to handle more cargo, "the situation regarding (inadequate) capacity of Railways is a major concern".

Director of Ports, Government of Andhra Pradesh, V Ravi Kumar, said development of four new ports is on the anvil in the state.

S N Venkatraman, Convenor, CII Telangana EXIM Panel and Vice-President, ITC Ltd, suggested to the government of Telangana, a land-locked state, to establish 'dry ports' and develop strong infrastructure to link it with the sea ports in Andhra Pradesh.

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...

10 Smartphones with Features that You Won't Find in Any Other Phone

Here’s a list of phones which are first-of-their-kind. From feature phones to smartphones, flat screen to curved, fragile to shatterproof, mobile phones have evolved over the years. Although many industry analysts would like to call the current level of innovation reaching a stagnation point, there still are some manufacturers which have been able to surprise consumers by truly packing something different in their smartphones. We have compiled a list of phones which offer first-of-its-kind features, and they are not merely concepts. 1. Motorola X force - Shatterproof display Display today is the most vulnerable yet the most neglected element in modern smartphones. But Motorola finally paid heed to the fragile screen with the launch of the the Motorola X Force – the world’s first smartphone with a shatterproof display. The phone uses the Moto ShatterShield display technology, which is said to be an integrated system consisting of five layers designed from material...

IntellectBeat

Search This Blog