| Green energy may have become a buzzword in the cities today but people in the hinterland of the country prefer conventional power grids for electricity.
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| The reason: while the standalone solar or bio-energy units would help light a few bulbs per household, grid power can provide electricity for various purposes, including running agricultural pumps and other household appliances.
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| “Villagers in such places feel that they also have a right to the grid-distributed power and they shouldn’t be discriminated. Political parties are also pushing for grid power for their people,” said a senior official of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
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| The list of villages to be electrified under the remote village electrification (RVE) scheme is therefore getting tapered down every year. In the last list that the ministry was given, 9,000 remote villages were identified for electrification.
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| While 3,000 have been taken away from the list by various states already, some more are also likely to be knocked off from the list.
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| “The final number would stand between 4,000 to 5,000,” said the official.
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| Those villages which cannot be electrified under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) because they are remotely located or it is an expensive proposition to provide power to them, are electrified using solar energy and/or bio-energy.
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| About 95 per cent of the electrification under RVE has been done through photovoltaic technology that uses solar power.
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| The concentration of such remote villages is high in Jharkhand, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. Assam has about 2,000 villages to be electrified using renewable energy.
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| Under RVE, states are provided 90 per cent grant by the MNRE. So far, the government has spent about Rs 150 crore (2005 to October 31, 2007) on RVE and about Rs 143 crore has been earmarked for the current year, of which some amount has already been utilised.
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| This model, at the moment, hasn’t given any revenue to the government. The government was expecting Rs 22 to Rs 40 per household per month. Setting up power-generating capacity through solar photovoltaic technology cost Rs 15,000 to Rs 18,000 per unit.
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| Even after electrifying all villages through RVE, this would still be called “interim solutions” because ultimately the grid has to reach these places or the cost of renewable energy will have to come down. In an ideal situation, it would be a mix of renewable and conventional energy,” said the MNRE official.
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| Currently, around 7.7 per cent of the country’s total energy generation comes from renewable sources, mostly from wind energy, biomass projects and mini hydel projects.
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| The country has an installed renewable generation capacity of 10,622.45 Mw and the Centre is targeting the addition of another 14,000 Mw of renewable energy capacity during the Eleventh Five Year Plan. |
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