雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Low-Cost Lamps Light Rural India

雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Low-Cost Lamps Light Rural India

Until three months ago, life in this 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 in the dim, smoky glow of a kerosene lamp, when their monthly fuel quota of four litres dried up in just a fortnight, they had to strain their eyes using the light 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 were installed by the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), an Indian non-governmental organisation focused on bringing light to rural India. Some 100,000 Indian villages do not yet have electricity. The GSBF lamps use LEDs - light emitting diodes - that are four times more efficient than a normal bulb. After a $55 installation cost, solar energy lights the lamp free of charge. LED lighting, like cell phones, is another example of a technology whose low cost could allow the 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 the primary lighting media. The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and - despite being subsidised - consumes nearly four per cent of a typical rural Indian household’s budget. A recent report by the Intermediate Technology Development Group suggests that indoor air pollution from such lighting media results in 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year. LED lamps, or more specifically white LEDs, are believed to produce nearly 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventional bulb. "This technology can light an entire rural village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100-watt light bulb,” says Dave Irvine-Halliday, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada and the founder of Light up the World Foundation (LUTW). Founded in 1997, LUTW has used LED technology to bring light to nearly 10,000 homes in remote and disadvantaged corners of some 27 countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, and the Philippines.

The technology, which is not yet widely known in India, faces some scepticism here. “LED systems are revolutionising rural lighting, but this isn’t a magic solution to the world’s energy problems,” says Ashok Jhunjhunwala, head of the electrical engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. In a scenario in which nearly 60 per cent of India’s rural population uses 180 million tons of biomass per year for cooking via primitive wood stoves - which are smoky and provide only 10-15 per cent efficiency in cooking -Jhunjhunwala emphasises the need for a clean energy source, not just for lighting but for other domestic purposes as well. The Indian government in April launched an ambitious project to bring electricity to 112,000 rural villages in the next decade. However, the remote locations of the village will make reaching this goal difficult. A. K. Lakhina, the chairman of India’s Rural Electrification Corporation, says the Indian government recognises the potential of LED lighting powered by solar technology, but expressed reservations about its high costs. “If only LEDs weren't imported but manufactured locally,” he says, “and in bulk.”

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Questions 27-30

For each question, only ONE of the choices is correct.

Write the corresponding letter in the appropriate box on your answer sheet.

27.The GSBF lamps

A provide light for 100,000 Indian villages.

B are very expensive to install.

C are powered by the sun.

28.More than half of India’s population uses

A kerosene as a cooking fuel.

B biomass as a cooking fuel.

C solar power as a cooking fuel.

29.In India, the GSBF lamps are too expensive for most people

A in rural areas.

B in urban areas.

C in all areas.

30.The GSBF lamps

A are not as reliable as electricity from the national power grid.

B require skill to use.

C only provide four hours of light a day.

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