Abhimanyu Muchhal, a rising senior at High School South, has been studying alternative forms of energy for more than a year. At home Muchhal often heard his parents talk about the rising prices on their power bill. “Then Hurricane Sandy hit and we lost power for a week,” he says. “While living in the dark seemed adventurous at first, I got a taste of how disconnected and frustrated I felt.”
Born in Jaipur, India, he has lived in the area for most of his life. He visits India almost every summer and did a two-year stint in India during fifth and sixth grades. His father, Jitendra Muchhal, and mother, Vijaya Muchhal, run an IT consulting business. His brother, Siddharth, 14, is entering South as a freshman.
At South, Muchhal is vice president of Model UN and president of the Debate Club. Outside of school he is an active member of the Mercer County March of Dimes.
“Due to the brutal heat in India, the electricity consumption skyrocketed and caused frequent power outages due to overload,” Muchhal says. “One of my strongest memories was seeing my great grandfather — at the age of 85 and almost completely dependent on his walking stick — having to climb flights of stairs just to get home, as the elevator had stopped. But as I learned, the situation was worse in villages across the nation, and the world, where electricity was scarce.”
As an avid reader, Muchhal had studied the idea of nuclear energy both in science fiction novels and his chemistry class. At a research seminar he met MV Ramana, a professor in the Program of Science and Global Security at Princeton University. “Under his guidance I learned more about the science and policy on nuclear energy,” says Muchhal, who focused on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan and its impacts on energy policy in emerging nations. “The culmination of a year’s research under him resulted in receiving credit in a paper published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.”
Continued research led Muchhal to photovoltaic plates. “These materials used light energy and induced electron flow, which could be used as electricity. Unlike nuclear energy, this technology was much safer, cheaper, and could be installed on a small scale, such as in housing installations,” he says.
When Muchhal looked at a map of global solar radiation, he noticed that his hometown in India was a red spot — an area receiving a high amount of radiation. He explored opportunities there this summer.
“I was an observer in a solar project under M & B Switchgears, where I got to visit solar plants holding up to 75 MW of electricity, enough to power a town for a day,” he says. He spoke with plant engineers to learn about the materials they used and how to optimize light.
“In Mumbai, I got to sit in with Proficient Energy Limited, a startup that was joining the industry of solar water heaters,” he says. “These technologies could be installed on terraces and heat bath water for residential and commercial buildings. Understanding the science, the market, and the impact convinced me that solar energy had a remarkable potential in developing markets.”
“As our power consumption skyrockets, we need to start switching from fossil fuel to alternative sources of energy,” says Muchhal. “What is encouraging is I see more and more establishments in West Windsor and Plainsboro adapting solar panels. As a rising senior moving onto college, I’d like to continue experimenting with materials such as carbon nanotubes and other polymers, which can accomplish this task better. Hopefully some day, my inventions can help people in underdeveloped and developed nations receive get empowered through alternate sources of energy.”
