The right suite of design solutions and delivery models with innovative financial support mechanisms has the potential for distributed solar to complement the centralised grid and support the Indian government’s goal of Power for All by 2022
n April 28, India made the remarkable achievement of completing grid electrification of all census villages in the country. However, the number of households not connected to the grid continues to be in millions. Though the villages have been provided with completely new electricity infrastructure and in many more the network has been strengthened, a large number of households opted not to connect to the grid because of financial constraints and/or the perception that electricity supply and service will be poor.
To address the recurring issue of lower household coverage, the Union government launched the Saubhagya scheme in September 2017 to connect 40 million unelectrified households by March 2019. While the date is ambitious as such large-scale implementation will also face a number of challenges, Saubhagya should be credited with tackling many of the shortcomings of previous electrification programmes. The scheme has made provision for micro-lending for above poverty line households to meet connection costs, use of distributed solar for grid-inaccessible households, and expanding the scope of subsidy to cover wider beneficiary groups.
The next step to complete household electrification is providing 24×7 power supply to all connected households in the most reliable and affordable manner. While the generation-side challenges that persisted for a long time have been resolved and new capacities, including those based on grid-integrated renewable energy sources, are being added at a fast pace, distribution of electricity, especially in terms of providing quality service, remains a challenge in most states in India.
The task of providing electricity supply round-the-clock primarily falls on the state-run electricity distribution companies (discoms). These discoms not only have to ensure that they produce/buy and supply electricity to villages, but also that they do it in the most efficient manner possible while ensuring revenues sustainability. Until such time, stand-alone solar photovoltaic (PV) based distributed renewable energy (DRE) systems such as solar home systems and micro-grids, being implemented in many areas, will find favour. The World Resources Institute estimated a few years ago that off-grid distributed energy service in India is a $2-billion-a-year untapped market. A recent report by the Climate Group too estimates the size of the mini-grid market in India at $150 million.
The reliability of electricity service in the evening peak hours in remote rural areas still remains poor in many states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha. Also, the metering, billing & collection (MBC) and network maintenance services are so weak that villagers have to resort to multiple coping strategies to meet their home lighting needs. This set of access gap consumers are the potential users of decentralised solar PV solutions. Whether electricity is from the grid or from decentralised solar PV, it does not matter to them. The key is – it should be readily available when required the most, and be reliable and affordable.
Currently, there are several innovative ideas on the ground that are providing reliable energy access in rural India. A unique institutional model has been developed in Bihar under the Lighting a Billion Lives Programme in partnership with the Jeevika programme under the state government’s Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotion Sociaty (BRLPS).Here, 60% of the cost of solar home lighting systems and clean cookstoves were paid by rural women through their savings in Self Help Groups, and 40% was raised through CSR funds and grants from bilateral/multilateral donors. The households are serviced by a trained pool of energy entrepreneurs and solar technicians who earn an income from this enterprise. This pilot has benefited nearly 50,000 households across 6 districts of Bihar.
Such kind of pro-poor public private partnerships not only assist in enhancing clean energy access but also enhance the agency of the women-run SHG federations. Households such as these, when provided with a grid connection under Saubhagya in the near future, could use the solar home systems as a backup in time of black-outs or as alternative source of electricity when required, in the same way as most urban households in India, including in the National Capital Region, keep inverter-storage systems despite a better electricity supply situation than rural areas.
With falling prices of solar PV and storage technologies and the advent of smarter digital technologies, decentralised solar is going to play a major role in enhancing and sustaining electricity access to meet consumer demand in a reliable and affordable fashion.
Access to electricity has ceased to be a binary, as is the case for discom-supported grid electricity. Rather, with the diffusion of decentralised solar PV products to supplement or be used as alternatives to centralised grid electricity, access to electricity is now multi-tiered, according to the level, quantity, and quality of the service demand. The right suite of design solutions and delivery models with innovative financial support mechanisms has the potential for distributed solar to complement the centralised grid and support the Indian government’s goal of Power for All by 2022.
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About Debajit Palit
Debajit Palit works in the fields of clean energy access, distributed generation, rural electrification policy and regulation, solar photovoltaics and biomass gasification. He had joined TERI in 1998. Palit also leads the ‘Lighting for All’ Working Group under the Energy for All Partnership of ADB.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
