Pedal power will light up Mysore Palace this Dasara

On the first day of Dasara, Mysore Palace will be illuminated not with regular electricity but with pedal power. "The Mysore Palace Board and district administration, in association with a private telecom company, plans to fit dynamos to bicycles and generate power," said assistant executive engineer, Mysore Palace Board Parashiva Murthy.



Ten cycles will be placed on the palace premises and visitors can pedal for as long as they wish. Power is generated using a dynamo and the generated power will be stored in batteries and used to light up the palace on Oct 16.

Asked if there'll be sufficient power to illuminate the entire palace, he said the palace has 98,260 bulbs of 15 watts each and every hour, 1 megawatt power is needed to light up the palace. Cycle-generated power will not be sufficient to illuminate the entire palace but just a certain portion of it.

"The effort is to spread the message about the benefits of cycling and we hope the response is positive," Mysore Palace Board deputy director TS Subramanya told STOI. The palace gets over 5,000 footfalls every day.

Deputy commissioner PS Vastrad said, "We've discussed this project with a private firm which will install the necessary equipment required for power generation." In earlier efforts to popularize cycling, the district administration introduced the cycle-to-work culture in which bureaucrats came to office by bicycles.

Times View

The use of dynamos to generate electricity is ages old, but the idea of using such power to illuminate the centre of Karnataka's Nada Habba is innovative. Though the bicycles will light up only a part of the Mysore Palace, it's an eye-catching demo of the advantages of using bicycles. Visitors to the palace during Dasara can do their bit for eco-friendly illumination. The district administration's efforts to promote cycling are worth emulating.