Study of viability of solar energy for rural electrification

Abstract

Energy plays a vital role in building our life and organizing it. Apart from poverty alleviation, climatic change, it also helps in achieving basic human needs such as greater productivity, prosperity and comfort. Absence of accessing modern energy leads to the usage of inferior fuels, which is very harmful to the individuals and society. Extending energy to common citizens, particularly poor, becomes paramount importance in terms of quality of life, health, education, increasing income, and economic opportunities towards growth. One third of world s population, who are mostly from Africa and Pacific Asia, have no access or little access to modern clean energy as per the reports of MNRE Compendium (Compilation of Case Studies). India s situation is also not so good since there are still 400 million people, who do not have access to electricity and 625 million people solely depend on traditional type of source for cooking purpose. Indian power sector is witnessing a revolution to overcome the power demand by generating power from various renewable sources of energy, because of global warming due to CO2 emission in the process of electricity generation by means of non-renewable sources. Extending modern energy through grid to rural community is neither financially viable nor sustainable giving rise to a very complex challenging situation to Governments. So transforming of rural lives and livelihoods to access modern energy is gaining momentum and there is an urgent need to devise an appropriate energy policy and right model is inevitable. Though government takes active steps through various agencies, still 38,605 villages are unelectrified. In those un-electrified villages, 18,000 villages are not possible to be electrified through conventional means. Our aim is to find alternatives to electrify these 18,000 villages by means of solar energy. The results of the survey carried out among the conventional energy users and solar energy users shows the viability to electrify these villages by solar energy. With strict mandate, it could be possible to achieve the desired goal with the cooperation and participation of all stake holders.Though many options like small Hydro, Bio-mass, Wind, Solar, etc., are available, this study focuses on solar energy due to its suitability and advantageous to use such scattered and distributed applications. A survey conducted reveals that solar energy is one of the viable option for Rural Electrification in India, despite some of the short comings, which were discussed in the study. This study also explores the ways and means to overcome the disadvantages of using solar energy as a viable alternative for rural electrification apart from recommending various policy initiatives.