Clean energy bid can help states with huge bills for subsiding power

Building community-sized renewable energy plants and shutting down old coal plants is a workable solution, say experts.

A. Selvan, who works as a contract driver in Chennai, gets a bimonthly electricity bill of around Rs 800. If it were not for the Tamil Nadu government's power subsidy for domestic consumers, he would have had to pay thrice that amount, around Rs 2,500.

Tamil Nadu, like many states in India, supplies free or subsidised power to certain categories of consumers, primarily domestic and agricultural users. Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh are the other states that offer variable subsidies to different categories of users.

While subsidised power is useful for Selvan and consumers like him,