Village energy security In India

                                                      

                             India is moving towards development at an emphatic pace. But in this inevitable process of development the country seems to improve in digits but not all the people enjoys the development. Especially those people who are living in the villages, remote areas do not get equal benefits as do the upper class gets. The most important is the provision of energy be it electricity, gas, kerosene or anything that one expects   from government   at least. Due to the efforts of VESP (Village Energy Security Programme) and RGGVY (Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidhyutikaran Yojana) under the MNRE and MOP many rural areas were enlighten. Coming to data, of 593732 villages in India nearly 94.4% are declared electrified. But there still remain many remote places under darkness.

 

                                        The idea of VESP is to electrify the remote villages by setting up a renewable power plant in locality mostly a biomass plant, SVO etc.  Local equipment and manpower are used in set up of plants and local people are trained and employed to operate them. The fuel for biomass is obtained from locality only. Also many tributaries and rivers are subjected to check dams (small hydro) to generate electricity and recharge the ground water level which is very important from the point of view of irrigation.

But still things are not over yet when it comes to maintenance, or when the remote areas are geographically inert in country map. Difficulties arise in areas inside forest, tribal or islands or hilly regions where even vehicles cannot go. To set up plant or extend wires becomes unviable mentally physically and financially given the budget constraints. MNRE and VESP are still tackling the situations. Looking briefly into technical issues the load factor are lesser then expectation due to unavailability of fuel, biomass, inadequate training, low uptimes, maintenance, breakdowns etc.  Financially there is always a viability gap making them dependent on subsidy.

                                       Due to such vivid experience from one place to other, The VESP is gaining more maturity in the process which is improving its efficiency, work-rate, methodology, liquidity of subsidies. So the Programme and the government are making their sincere efforts in raising the rural. But the real solution is attached to every citizen of the country. Due to increasing demand of urban people and their willing-ness to pay has increased their share of electricity. The per capita use of electricity of India is 879.22 kWh and it is increasing and there is a huge gap between the rural and urban community. People are exploiting the resources and making the poor deprived of the same. Due to this there is lot of power-cuts in most states of nation and generally backward areas are at receiving end.  Also the illiteracy is keeping them down in darkness.

                                        So overall the combine efforts can only lit the whole nation.