Energy for 125000 villages

India has a very pressing need to provide electricity to people in remote and rural areas to support their social and economic development.

This is a high priority of the Indian Government, which is electrifying 125,000 villages at a cost of more than NZD 8 billion over 2007-2012. The need to supply electricity to areas far from the national electricity grid has created strong demand for off-grid renewable power systems.

Why is it important ?

India's government has accorded high priority to rural electrification, allocating more than NZD 8 billion over 2007-2012 and connecting almost 65,000 unelectrified villages and 8.3 million households to date.

The government has also evidenced strong commitment to developing India's renewable energy resources and technology. India is the only country in the world with a dedicated ministry for this purpose - the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).

With a population of 1.2 billion, 70% of whom live in 5.5 million villages, India is a huge market in its own right. It also represents an ideal test bed for the demonstration of technology that could provide a model for deployment in other developing countries.

India also has excellent human resources in engineering and a growing base of indigenous technology to support the development and adaptation of renewable energy technologies to local conditions.

What are the opportunities?

The challenge of exporting clean technology to India lies in adapting the technology to be suitable for local conditions. However, if one can adapt then the opportunities are huge.

Under the Indian government's flagship rural electrification scheme NZD 159m has been allocated to capital subsidies for ‘decentralised distributed generation' systems in the current planning period (2007-2012).

A further NZ$ 255m is available for remote village electrification from renewable energy sources specifically. What is more, the solutions developed in India would almost certainly have a high applicability in other parts of South and Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and the Pacific.

We have done in depth work in this area and can help with realising the opportunities, please contact us.