In April 2006, the Government of India launched an ambitious project to bring electricity to 112,000 rural villages in the next decade. It is a very difficult target to meet considering the remote locations of the villages in the country.
However, some non-government organizations and private entities are introducing technologies whose low cost is enabling villages to get light even after sunset, that too at a cheaper cost than their present mode of lighting. One quick solution is installation of low-cost, energy-efficient lamps powered entirely by the sun.
Lighting up a village with less energy than a 100 watt light bulb
Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based non-governmental organization, has introduced a technology that can light an entire rural village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100 watt light bulb. This is a leading movement to bring light to rural India. The company’s lamps use LEDs – light emitting diodes – that are four times more efficient than an incandescent bulb. After a $55 installation cost, solar energy lights the lamp free of charge. This can be a boon to some 100,000 Indian villages which do not yet have electricity.
It is estimated that LED lamps produce nearly 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventional bulb. It is reported that indoor air pollution from fuel such as kerosene, which is used by nearly 80 million in India to light their houses, is not only dangerous and polluting but consumes 4 percent of a typical rural Indian household’s budget.
Solar-powered lantern
In Chikanpada village, three hours from Mumbai, Greenlight Planet, a for-profit enterprise based in the U.S, has been selling a solar-powered lantern called the “Sun King”, which can play a crucial role in meeting the Government’s “power for all” programme by 2012. Sun King is being sold to villagers at a discounted price of $4 compared to its regular price of $15.
See video on low cost lighting for Indian villages.
