Rapid pace of Rural Electrification of 18,452 villages

In months that I have been tracking this particular news it is heartening to know that an entire team of Power Ministry is working extremely hard to ensure no village remains without electricity. The PM Modi had announced all remaining 18,452 villages to get electricity in 1000 days since Aug 2014.

Since then the pace at which this is being achieved is unprecedented in the history of independent India. There are several villages where electricity was only dreamt of. To see an electric pole or wires transmitting electricity was a distant dream. As of April 2016 - 7,146 villages are electrified. The govt is extremely serious about this issue and this can be just gauged by the fact that the Power Minister - Piyush Goyal has opened a real Android/iphone app to track this and has made public all the field engineers in charge of every village so that they could be contacted right away for any issues. The dashboard keeps getting updated as the implementation progresses.

Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/economy/centre-energises-7000-villages-week-aheadmarch-31-deadline_5993681.html

However, electrification doesn't mean 24 hour electricity.  The intention is once you have the grid to every village - it is only a matter of time that the grid can be supplied with uninterrupted electricity. If one looks at the progress the government has  - 1) Already achieved annual goal of 5000MW of Solar energy 2) Reduced Coal import by Rs.28,000 Crore because of record coal production through transparent mechanism. 3) ensured that 66 out of 100 coal plants had no coal at all before 2014 - but no plant today faces any coal shortage.

There are villages that are also provided electricity through renewable sources and are currently off grid.

In short, until 2014 because of the coal scam during the UPA II government electricity generation through coal was drastically reduced; mining coal came to a halt; country was importing high amount of coal causing enough load on fiscal deficit. These no longer exist. On the contrary, India has stopped coal imports this year completely (Source)

Should India celebrate then? No, it is too soon. If we don't see electricity cuts for 2 successive years we would have achieved something unthinkable since Independence.

Here's a reality check of 7000 villages being electrified on NDTV. Interestingly, 85% of villages in UP are now electrified.

There are numerous such success stories on how life is changing for these villages where electricity is reached

One such is this - http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/21/electrifying-india-the-day-the-light-came-to-rural-hotasar

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/economy/centre-energises-7000-villages-week-aheadmarch-31-deadline_5993681.html

In Saharanpur there was no electricity since independence. It is amazing to see how life has changed for people now. Here's the article published in Navbharat times

The eastern states - Bihar, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Assam - are having the highest number of unelectrified villages after Uttar Pradesh in the north. The key to electrification is how quickly government can electrify these.



Earlier, a village was considered electrified if its public places and 10% of its households have electricity. This criteria has been now changed and the new field officers - Gram Vidyut Abhiyantas (GVA) verifying that the entire village is electrified. The approach is to not use state government's data alone, which is found to be error prone. These GVA's update the dashboard and make it public to everyone as they notice the progress.

"Hindu"(Source) newspaper reported that these GVA's numbers show discrepancy as well - but out of 7000 villages only 30 could not be guaranteed as "electrified" even though dashboard shows it. This is still a very low error rate compared to 7000 villages.

There cannot be any iota of doubt with the fact that the government is so serious about bringing in the transformation of lives by electrifying villages.  The target now is 3074 villages to be electrified through off grid mainly because of geographic barriers and 438 villages by the state governments themselves. If this pace continues surely within a year all villages will be electrified.

Building the infrastructure to supply electricity is one good thing, however, the best thing that can happen is round the clock electricity without any load shedding. Is the government really doing enough on this? The answer is mixed bag. However, if the electricity generation supply surpasses the demand it will be a breakthrough.

India becomes world's 5th largest installed wind power

Some facts fascinate the growth of India. This is surely one of them. INDIA is the WORLD's 5th largest in terms of installed electricity through wind power. Here is the report from the WORLD WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION OF THE WORLD confirming this. From a mere 4000 MW in 2005, we have now reached 13,000 MW in 2010. China is ahead with 25,000 MW. It is a journey that is taking the world by storm. India is not only producing electricity using wind energy, but also exporting wind turbines and blades to US, Europe, Africa. The components are also Indian made (80%). Now, one understands why Obama keeps talking of green jobs going to India and China.

How many have traveled to Kanyakumari? On the way you will see 100's of wind mill turbines on both sides of the road. I didn't realize the enormous benefit these turbines can give to Indian energy needs back in 2005. Today, I am amazed at the way wind energy is being tapped in the country.

There are about 18 private companies generating wind energy in India viz; Suzlon (5th largest in the world in wind energy generation and is an INDIAN COMPANY), Vestar, Gamesa, Enercon, RRB Energy, Shriram Leitner, Regen Power, a small number of companies in Coimbatore. By 2012-13, we are expected to grow to 18,000 MW. and by 2020 -  65,000 MW.  The 11th 5 year plan targets 9000 MW and we have already generated 5035 MW.

Here is the top 10 electricity producers of 2009 (using wind energy). We have increased by 2000 MW in  every year since 2005.

This is very interesting because in India the energy need is increasing exponentially as people are coming out of poverty and income levels are rising.

Today, the grid power capacity is 148 Giga Watt (GW) and only 16 GW comes from renewable energy (just more than 10%). However, this is all set to reach 90 GW in the next few years.

2 Classic examples of how this is changing the lives of people in some parts of India where it is heavily generated:

Dhule, Maharashtra:

Dhule has the largest windfarm in Asia.  800 Turbines generate about 1000 MW of Electricity.

 

Here's New York Times Article showing how an Indian company Suzlon is now going overseas with huge orders to export wind turbines and blades and how it is revolutionizing wind energy generation.

Odanthurai, TamilNadu 

Population: 7500 and 9 villages get electricity from wind and there is no power cut (Evert major city faces power cuts, but not these villages), in fact have excess, which they sell to other panchayats or state government.  Because of this, the number of houses have gone up from 250 to 1650 and no longer people want to go to cities.

This village has 350kW windmill, solar panels and biomass gasifier which generate enough electricity that they make money by selling it to TamilNadu Electricity Board.

TAMILNADU, MAHARASHTRA and GUJARAT are the top 3 producers of electricity through wind energy in India.

Nowadays, with the set up of so many companies, the latest standards and practices are being used. However, transmission losses are inevitable, but the kind of technology that is being used in the generation is slowly showing its efficiency in this aspect.

Recently, Siemens entered the market and has begun to generate electricity.

On the flip side, the private companies should get incentives when they sell power. The charges they get is lesser than the ones generated from coal and water. Hence, the government has to make this lucrative. The usual problems like land acquisition, getting forest clearances delays in getting these has slowed down the momentum. Here are the some of the incentives government is giving to private companies that generate power from wind energy.

At the national level, wind power development benefits from fiscal and financial incentives, including provision of 80% accelerated depreciation; a ten-year tax holiday; and favorable provisions on wheeling, banking and third party sale. Eighteen out of the twenty-nine Indian states now have in place Renewable Purchase Specification (RPS) with mandatory purchase requirement of green energy of up to 10% and have introduced preferential tariffs for electricity produced from renewable sources

The scene as of now looks very optimistic with every major private company willing to investment in electricity generation as Govt badly needs them to meet the energy requirements.

Unlike solar, wind energy is not uniformly available in India. The west, north west and south India are the best suited while north and east are not.

So, have our electricity problems vanishing? The answer to this is "yes" and "no"....Yes, because the electricity generation is slowly shifting to  private players who are more easily meeting the planned targets. No, because the share of coal and water in electricity generation is still close to 90%. This has to increase, but expecting from private players can be much more forthcoming than the government. 

SWADES movie in real life - An inspiration

How many movie scripts turn themselves to real stories? It is, however, another fact that several movie scripts are based on real stories or incidents. SWADES - a patriotic movie, was one of the best movies made in Bollywood. The core theme of the story was awakening Indians to do something(or give back) possible for their society - more so who are outside India. It requires great courage to be a character like Mohan Bhargava (played by Shah Rukh Khan) in real life. For some, such a character seemed impossible. Reality, sometimes, is far more different than conclusions drawn by the mind. 

So, this blog article brings you the case of Gyanesh Pandey - a Bihari who left for US long ago in search of better prospects and now has returned permanently. His research and knowledge is lighting up villages in Bihar. The parallel between the movie and this case study is the core theme.

Note: Most of the facts presented in this article are taken from a detailed article that appeared in Rediff. The source is this link. Also, this article is not about the technical aspects of the working. Every such mechanism will have its pros and cons. Nothing is perfect. What is sure is that it is changing the lives of thousands of people in villages.

Gyanesh Pandey is an electrical engineer who studied and worked in US for several years. Later 2 other friends - Ratnesh Yadav and Manoj Sinha joined. Manoj studied microprocessors and worked in US. The team researched and concluded through various experiments and developed a low cost model of generating electricity from husk. Husk is a product that goes waste in almost all villages.  While Gyanesh is the engineer returned back, Manoj is the MBA graduate taking care of business aspects.  The Chief Strategy Officer is Charles Ransler. Manoj and Charles are students of Univ of Virgina - Darden School of Business. The business plan they demonstrated won the most Innovative Award in Texas in 2008. Here is the link of the univ website.

 The above picture is that of Charles and Manoj.

The system they engineered does not burn rice husk but heats it up instead. A clean-burning mix of gases is produced that drive an engine. The engine turns a generator that produces electricity. Such gasifiers can be easily made locally.

This is what MIT Engineering Magazine published - Turning Abyss of Darkness into Islands of Light

Here's the company on Facebook

The company they set is HPS - Husk Power Systems. The website is http://www.huskpowersystems.com/

EFFECT:

• Even the waste can be used as a manure and the process reduces carbon emissions drastically - almost 200 tonnes.
• 120 villages in Bihar get 6-12 hours uninterrupted supply of power - 12 hrs is significant from having no electricity at all. The villagers have mobile phones but no electricity to charge and they would walk miles to get them charged for Rs.5-10 before they got electricity.
• 3 villages in Uttar Pradesh too get power.
• 50,000 villagers are getting electricity - something they have never dreamt of seeing in their lifetime.
• 24 hours can be given but there is no such demand for now as villagers are beginning to realize the benefits of electricity.
• Gyanesh has become GOD for people -
• Future plan is go up to 200 villages by year end and select villages in Maharashtra later. By 2014 to reach 2000 villages across India.
• West Champaran, Tumukha and several villages in Bihar are getting electricity - These have been extremely backward regions of India
• 32 plants set up till date 
• The Central Govt and Bihar Govt are ready to tie up with the company to generate electricity.

1 PLANT = can generate electricity for upto 5 villages (depending upon number of households - 2000 to 4000)

Each plant = Rs.15 lakh to set up and distribute

Each plant can supply 32 Kilo Watt of Electricity

Funding - done by Universities in US, World Bank = $4 million  and $75,000 from Shell Foundation

Efficiency = close to 99%.

Rs. 120 for running a fan and 2 CFL bulbs is charged from people while Rs. 80 is the charge for taking a connection.

(SOURCE)

 As Gyanesh himself says (SOURCE) - “The entire village would be asleep by 8:30 – 9:00 pm. But now they stay up much longer. They don’t panic if they forget to carry a torch light.  Now they don’t have to pay to charge their cell phone - they can do it at home. Earlier, small businesses would charge the villagers Rs 5 - Rs10 just to charge a cell phone.”

"This is the best experience of my life…Electricity can seed a lot more than just some lumens of light. It can affect each aspect of roti, kapda and makaan (food, clothes and shelter).  And the way we do this ensures that every single individual who interacts with us goes feeling a little bit better about things.”

"This is certainly a welcome change in the villages. People can work longer if they wish to at night. Children who used kerosene lamps are able to study better. Women can do the cooking at a convenient time instead of rushing during the day time.Snake bites and burglaries have also decreased. Shopkeepers do business for a longer time. Electricity will also help set up small-scale units in the villages."

As far as his motivation to do this, here is what he says - "But the good thing is I had the drive, a motivating factor from within, to work in India. No one pushed me to do this."

Just imagine if even 10 such innovations can reach Indian villages - what power they can unleash. Progress can be made through simple ideas and these guys have proven it. I salute these heroes...

Further study can be done from the materials below:

Green electricity for Bihar villages

Power from husk

Rice husk lights up villages

Univ Of Virginia - Powering villages through husk wins Business Plan Competition

Bihar to get 200 MW of energy from paddy husk.

Power husk to light up TamilNadu and Bengal villages.

New York Times - Husk to power Indian villages

Read the interview on this site by the guys themselves