Electrifying South Asia
Off grid options offer solution to energy crisis
South Asian governments would do well to integrate off-grid with grid options in
their quest to achieve universal electrification, says a new study.
“The governments prefer to extend the grid even to those regions in which
renewable energy sources are available in plenty,” says Debajit Palit, Associate
Director, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, and co-author of
the study due to be published July in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
“Off-grid options are reserved for those regions where grid extension is not
possible.”
For every five people in rural South Asia, two live without electricity. The
main approach is to extend the existing grid to the villages, or set up a
mini-grid for a cluster of villages using renewable sources of energy. These
approaches are seen as competing approaches, although they could complement each
other, the study says.
Grid expansion is not economically sustainable if there is not enough load at
the village, which is often the case, says Palit. Additionally, focus on
village-centric electrification has resulted in skewed electrification profiles
in which the governments claim high electrification rates at the village level,
while the household electrification rates remain abysmally low, he says.
Palit and Kaushik Ranjan, Associate Professor, TERI University, compared both
grid and off-grid modes by carrying out an exhaustive survey of the literature
on both methods. The study infers that both modes need to be integrated to
achieve universal access to electricity.
“Government agencies are more concerned with extending infrastructure to the
villages than on actual connection to end users (households, small businesses
and so on) and the supply of electricity,” Palit told SciDev.Net.
The International Energy Agency predicts that off-grid and mini-grids can play a
pivotal role in rural electrification. By 2020, they are together expected to
account for more than half the capacity added.
Palit suggests rebalancing of options by combining grid and off-grid options.
The governments should also come up with enabling policies for off-grid
developers to operate and exit the business when the load has grown large enough
to be integrated into the grid.
Ashok Sreenivas, senior research fellow at the independent Prayas Energy Group,
says that “off-grid systems should complement grid systems and integrate with
them as the grid expands.” According to him, this would help the off-grid
developers who find it tricky to hook up their mini-grids to the main grid when
it starts functioning in a village.
- SciDev.Net |