Rural Power Solutions Even Other States Can Emulate

Context: As a recent ruling by Rajasthan’s power regulator implies, enabling energy access must go beyond powering rural homes.

Indian strides in expanding energy access in rural areas: 

• A near doubling of electrified rural households, from 55% in 2010 to 96% in 2020, according to World Bank.

Issues with power accessibility in rural areas:

• Measurement issues: The measure of access to power supply has been the number of households that have been connected to the electricity grid. 
• While this is a significant measure, it discounts large areas of essential and productive human activities such as public schools and primary health centres. 
• Unreliable power supply: Despite greater electrification, power supply is often unreliable in rural areas.

Directives from ruling by Rajasthan’s power regulator

• Solarise infrastructure: 
• Unelectrified public schools: The project to be carried out by state discoms can electrify 1500 government-run schools and generate 15 MW of power in Rajasthan.
• Government buildings such as primary health centres, panchayat offices, railway stations and bus stops could easily be transitioned to utilising clean energy.
• Potential benefits: 

• • • Enabling quality education, facilitating efficient implementation of mid-day meal kitchens, toilets, motorised water pumps, enhanced public space utilisation as COVID-19 care centres, relief camp during storms or floods.
    • The power that is generated could also be counted towards the discoms’ Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO). 
    • With battery storage, the susceptibility of grid infrastructure to extreme weather events could be mitigated. This is called climate proofing.

• Diversify infrastructure funding options: Through seeking Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds.
• Leveraging decentralised model of power generation: A feasible option for rural electrification as large-grid based projects mostly add to supply of power in urban areas.
• Convergence between government departments: E.g. Framework for discoms to work with State’s Education Department and leveraging CSR funding mechanism.