Empowering rural India

The sun sets early in South India. By 6.30 pm, it descends behind the mountain range in the distance. In many of the tribal villages in the hilly district of Wayanad, in the state of Kerala, it is the time for the lighting of kerosene lamps, or a fire that will also keep away snakes or even a hungry panther in search of prey at night. That’s how it used to be for the small Adivasi community of Poolakkunnu near Mepadi, too, until about ten years ago. In 1999, the lives of the twelve families started to change dramatically.
“I never trusted the government,” recalls Krishnan, their dedicated community leader, as until then his experience with government schemes for the “upliftment” of so-called “primitive tribal groups” had been rather disappointing. When RASTA (Rural Agency for Social & Technological Advancement), a Wayanad-based NGO, proposed to set up a solar powered community center in his hamlet, he was equally apprehensive. “I never knew what a community center was, and even what solar power was,” he says as he reflects on those times when his community lived in thatched houses and had little contact with the outside world. There was no electricity in the colony and the dream of getting light in their houses was as remote as the location of the village. “We used to work, come back home and sleep. We didn’t have any place to assemble and be together for a common purpose,” he recalls. After consultations with the community members, they finally expressed their willingness to go ahead with the proposed community center and the photovoltaic system the NGO had suggested.
With financial support from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, the community center and two photovoltaic panels were set up. “We installed two Siemens panels of 75 watts each, connected via an electronic charge controller to two 120 Ah batteries in parallel,” says Danesh Kumar of RASTA. “This design was under the consideration that even during the monsoon under low sunlight or under less duration of sun the batteries’, storage capacity needs to be sufficient to provide them three hours of use for five days. As such, an institutional photovoltaic system has been installed rather than a domestic system. The cost per panel was 20,000 rupees (330 euros) and per battery 6,500 rupees (107 euros). Two members of the community were trained in their maintenance. This equipped them to handle the technology, operation and maintenance with ease.” Along with lightning for the community center, the colony received sufficient power to run a TV set and a video cassette player.
“All were glued to the TV. No one was willing to go outside,” remembers Kavitha, now 20, of the immediate impact of this new development. Kavitha is one of the two youths from the colony who completed higher secondary education. “We used to rent video cassettes from Kalpetta and Meepadi town and used to watch them together in the community center.” Apart from that, “Doordarshan” (the national channel) was available and people watched daily news and other programs on it. “Things that never used to reach us were there right now in front of us through TV,” she adds.

Photovoltaics for social change

With light available in the evenings, the community center was used by children for their evening studies, which had formerly taken place at the fireplace. Literacy campaigns were conducted; self help groups that were active in the colony used the community center for their weekly meetings. During family ceremonies in any of the nine houses in the colony, solar power from the community center was used by connecting the individual house by a cable.
When Government and Panchayath (local self-government) officials and people from other colonies started to visit, people came together at the community center. The hamlet itself started to be of interest. College students came for study purposes. Communication through mobile phones was now possible. Interaction with the outside world increased significantly – and knowing what is happening elsewhere made all the difference to this small community perched over a hillock, physically isolated amidst tea plantations.
Motivation was high to keep the system running. For a community below the poverty line, the costs of maintenance were significant. The battery needed to be topped with distilled water and had to be checked periodically, initially once a month and later once every two weeks. The costs incurred were around 50 rupees each time (about one U.S. dollar). They were shared by the community members who earn their livelihood as daily laborers and by growing spices such as cardamom, pepper and ginger. Other follow-up costs included bulbs, which were sometimes destroyed during thunder and lightning, and cables to connect the PV system to their houses during family ceremonies.
What the community was not able to afford were new batteries after the first set had been exhausted. “We had got them the best quality batteries available at that time,” says Danesh from RASTA. “Normally such batteries would last for about four years. The community somehow extended it to five to six years.” RASTA was not able to get renewed support to replace the batteries, which means an investment of 13,000 rupees (214 euros). However, pressure to find a solution eventually reduced.
In 2000, the government started to provide grid connection to some of the tribal villages in remote areas. Krishnan embarked on the effort to bring electricity to their houses, too. It was not until 2006 that the community succeeded in getting the necessary funds allocated by the government. After years of tireless effort, in 2007, the colony was finally electrified. Now all the houses and the community center obtain electricity from the centralized grid.
The PV installation is no longer functional. The worn-out batteries are kept in the community center, ready to be sold for recycling. The solar panels – jointly owned by the Government of India and the community – are being safely kept in Krishnan’s house. Due to the increasing danger of land slides, the hamlet may need to be relocated in the not too distant future. A new community center will be set up at the new location, for which “going green” is envisaged by attaching a small garden with medicinal plants and by finally re-using the solar panels to light the center. By pooling their resources, the villagers hope to afford a new battery at that stage, but of smaller capacity.

India’s energy deficit

Through solar power, life in Poolakkunnu has changed for the better. “But there are many colonies in near-by areas that are even less developed. They haven’t even got the basic facilities that we have at present,” says Kavitha. And there are far more, not just in Wayanad, which is considered Kerala’s “backward” district with a large indigenous population. More than 70 percent of India’s 1.15 billion people live in rural areas. Tens of thousands of villages have no electricity at all and remain deprived of many of the benefits that a grid connection can bring to relieve some of the hardships of rural life, such as water pumping to provide drinking water and irrigation for communities faced with the uncertainties of monsoon-based agriculture. Other villages may be connected to the grid, but have intermittent or no supply. Even in urban areas, extended power cuts, both planned and unplanned, have been common.
The energy deficit in the country is huge. Despite a surge in electricity demand in the previous decade (averaging nearly four percent annually between 2000 and 2008), India’s electricity consumption per capita is as low as 509 kilowatt-hours, as compared to a world average of 2,568 kilowatt-hours per capita. According to KPMG’s report “Think BRIC”, it is projected to increase to 841 kilowatt-hours in India by 2020, while the world average may go up to 3,163 kilowatt-hours. India’s population is currently growing at 1.7 percent and is projected to increase to 1,404 million by 2020.
India’s rapidly increasing hunger for energy exceeds current production. More than 50 percent of the country’s total primary energy supply is covered by coal, of which India is a major importer. Oil represents one-third of India’s primary supply, while natural gas accounts for another eight percent. Nuclear power and hydroelectricity contribute eight to nine percent. Though the renewable energy sector is growing fast, its contribution to the country’s overall energy mix has not as of yet been significant.

Turning to the Sun

This is set to change. Alternative sources of energy are regarded as a viable solution to overcome one of India’s main hurdles to development and economic growth. “The installation of photovoltaics is picking up in the remote areas of the country, particularly in the foothills of the Himalayan mountain range,” says Danesh Kumar of RASTA. His organization has links with Barefoot College in Rajasthan, an organization that has set up a few thousand solar systems in North India. “Their success has been that they get the local people give in writing that they would bear the cost of installation at least partly, and they would pay the full cost of operation and maintenance. Another secret of success is getting local people appoint a local youth to be sent for training in the operation and maintenance of the system.” The communities are paying for the services of these “barefoot solar engineers”. The concept has even spread from India to Afghanistan and to the African continent.
On a smaller scale, “Beyond Solar”, an American non-profit organization promoting the use of renewable energy, applied the concept of micro credit to the renewable energy sector, in order to show that the rural poor could afford the costs of solar powered lighting systems. They formed a partnership with D. Light Design, a solar lantern manufacturer, and a local NGO, South Orissa Voluntary Action (SOVA). In the East Indian state of Orissa, they introduced solar-powered lanterns in villages in replacement for kerosene lamps. The households’ savings on kerosene and kerosene purchasing time, used to extend productive working hours, would help finance the lighting systems. The project was started by having villagers provide a down payment of 250 rupees (about four euros) and then installments of 25 rupees per week, until the 1,200 rupees price of the lantern (20 euros) is recovered. Repayment was strictly monitored. According to “Beyond Solar”, a major advantage of this system was that it did not simply gift products. By recovering costs, it would make the projects sustainable and scalable. Companies providing PV systems in India often work through self help groups linked to banks. Repayments are easier to collect as the self help groups in effect collect the money and relay it to the banks.

National plan on climate change

Apart from electrifying rural areas, India has other good reasons to invest heavily in solar energy. The country is endowed with huge solar energy potential, with up to 300 days of sunshine annually, though there are regional variations to this. Most parts of India receive four to seven kilowatts of solar radiation per square meter per day.
Solar power generation is an important tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With about 17 percent of the world’s population, India currently makes up approximately four percent of global emissions. However, the Indian economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, expected to grow at 7.2 percent in 2009-2010, according to the Finance Ministry’s recent annual economic survey. In the last decade, India had a 5.7 percent annual growth rate in electricity consumption. If the current trend continues, consumption in India is set to double over the next decade by 2020, according to KPMG’s research “Think BRIC”. To prevent greenhouse gas emissions from rising proportionately, India needs both energy efficiency and renewables. The National Solar Mission is one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change and is meant to be a major contribution by India to the global effort to meet the challenges of climate change.

India’s Solar Mission

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was launched in January 2010 by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. “Increased use of solar energy is a central component of our strategy to bring about a strategic shift from our current reliance on fossil fuels to a pattern of sustainable growth based on renewable and clean sources of energy,” said the Prime Minister in his inaugural address. The National Solar Mission is an initiative of the Government of India and the state governments. It envisages creating solar power generation capacity of 20,000 megawatts by 2022, compared to the current capacity of three megawatts. The government is expected to allocate 850 to 1,050 billion Indian rupees (11.9 to 14.7 billion euros) to support the mission. Further funding is expected under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The off-grid opportunity

Grid connected solar power technology in India is still in the early stages. The main opportunity lies in decentralized and off-grid applications. In remote areas where grid penetration is neither feasible nor cost effective, solar energy applications may turn out to be cost-effective. According to the Solar Mission, the key problem is to find the optimum financial strategy to pay for the high-end initial costs of these applications through appropriate Government support. As the example of Poolakkunnu shows, consideration also needs to be given to the follow-up costs that communities below the poverty line are likely to incur. To ensure sustainability, mechanisms are needed for them to be able to cover such costs long term.
The National Solar Mission plans to provide solar lighting systems under the ongoing remote village electrification program of the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy to cover about 10,000 villages and hamlets. Since most of the villages without access to grid electricity are remote settlements, up to 90 percent subsidy is provided. Rural villages are an immense market. Installations would typically be government- or non-profit funded.

Solar manufacturing in India

Currently, the bulk of India’s PV industry remains dependent on imports of critical raw materials and components, including silicon wafers. According to research by Frost & Sullivan on India’s solar photovoltaic market, the Indian PV market has already achieved global standards. In the last two to three years, it has grown into a well-organized market with more than 30 world-class PV module and cell suppliers. The aggregate module production capacity rose from less than 60 megawatts in 2005 to above a gigawatt in 2009.
One of the Solar Mission’s objectives is to assume a global leadership role in manufacturing solar technologies. This includes creating manufacturing capacities for polysilicon material able to create an annual two gigawatts capacity of solar cells. According to Frost & Sullivan, the successful implementation of the Solar Mission can vastly benefit module suppliers, solar PV/solar thermal-based independent power producers (IPPs) and system integrators.
On July 28 to 30, Solarcon India in Hyderabad is expecting over 3,000 visitors. On October 27 to 29 around 600 exhibitors from 40 countries are expected at the Delhi International Renewable Energy Conference (DIREC). Then December 14 to 16, the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai will host Intersolar India, showcasing the potential of PV to the country's environmental development. This increasing number of solar exhibitions shows the growing importance of the Indian market.