Rural Electrification: Role of Decentralized Distributed Generation
Rural Electrification is viewed as the key component for accelerating rural development. However, a large section of the rural population in India is still devoid of this basic minimum requirement for a decent living. According to the latest statistics, only around 60% of rural households are covered with electrification. On top of this, the quality and duration of supply of electricity across India, especially in rural areas, is added to the existing agony. The primary cause of such sub-standard services are poor record for outages, high levels of transmission and distribution (T&D) losses, theft and an overall poor and mal-functioned infrastructure.
To combat this, during the 11th Five Year Plan, the Government of India plans to provide access to electricity to 100% un-electrified villages and 100% households. Electrification of about 1.15 lakh un-electrified villages and electricity connections to 2.34 households Below Poverty Line is envisaged. In this context, alternative approaches to rural electrification have been proposed. They typically combine centralized grid connections as distribution franchises and Decentralized Distributed Generation (DDG) operated at the local level taking advantage of renewable energy technologies. The DDG projects, if widely replicated, can reduce the burden on both electricity supply shortfalls and reducing the urgency of costly grid extension. DDG offers the potential for affordable, clean and reliable electricity with minimal losses and effective maintenance and local cost recovery.
The experience of DDGs with the use of renewable energy sources has so far delivered mixed results due to a range of impediments. The instrumental ones amongst them are financing challenges along with institutional, technical and geographical constraints.
One of the major reasons of failure of the renewable energy technologies in rural areas through DDGs is probably the lack of buy-in by the local community. Though it is clearly mentioned in the 11th schedule is “Rural electrification, including distribution of electricity’ to be devolved to the Gram Panchayats”, hardly any measure has been taken to promote the same. Encouraging panchayats to take up decentralized power distribution will lead to increase community ownership of the projects and upkeep of maintenance services, Panchayats should generate fund to impose user fees/ taxes on a monthly/ bimonthly basis. At the same time the Gram Panchayats need to assume the key role in ensuring that the assets created are used and maintained properly.
Certain groups at Panchayat level can be made responsible to raise and maintain stock and steady supply of resources such as biomass which is perhaps the most cost effective and carbon neutral technology. Its’ also important to remember that such efforts, so far as possible, should have minimal impact on fodder or other uses for the rural communities; otherwise the cost of biomass will push up and ultimately will have an adverse impact on the interest of the communities.
The support system to maintain and run the set of equipments of the DDGs has not been given its due importance. Trainings of local youths can be arranged at the panchayat level for proper skill development. Finally, the political willingness would also play a crucial role for the success of DDG model.
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Tags: community buy-in, DDG, rural electrification