Decentralised renewable energy is bringing this Odisha village’s energy aspirations to life

Decentralised renewable energy has proven to be a reliable source of electricity for remote villages. One example of this is Maligaon village, located in the deep caverns of Kalahandi district, Odisha.

The village is divided into three hamlets with over 50 households. Maligaon was connected to the main grid in 2014, five years after it got access to electricity via a microgrid through Gram Vikas (a non-profit in rural Odisha) and Centre for Appropriate Technology’s Bushlight Programme from Australia.

This 9.63kW solar microgrid was started to help the community get access to electricity enough to power light bulbs and fans. Powered by lead-acid batteries, it was able to provide sufficient electricity for single-phase loads. 

This microgrid fulfiled the community’s needs until it became defunct in 2013. Even though the village got access to main grid electricity a year later, the supply is still extremely unreliable and erratic and is only present to power single-phase loads, making it difficult to support livelihood activities. 

Due to these reasons, the microgrid was renewed in 2017 with lithium-ion batteries and inverters. The project, costing Rs 53,00,000, was funded through philanthropic funding by Odisha State Planning Board and State Bank of India Youth for India Fellowship, along with individual donors. The new microgrid supports three-phase loads and has been functional since 2018, supplying reliable electricity during evening hours (6 pm-11 pm). 

Lithium-ion batteries are longer lasting (10 years as opposed to five years for lead-acid ones) and are built to power single-phase loads as well as larger three-phase loads to encourage the community to use this electricity to power livelihood loads as well. Reliable electricity supply has encouraged the community to take up more livelihood loads — people have invested in refrigerators for their kirana (grocery) shops and one person has even started a chappal (footwear) factory. 

The owner of a printing shop in the village, Nakul Nayak, said, “I have been able to invest in technological appliances such as a photocopy machine, printer and a photo printer because of the security that the availability of solar power provides in the absence of main grid power”. 

Laxman Naik, a farmer and the village development committee secretary, said, “If we get access to water pumps and can power them through the microgrid and the main grid, our annual income may potentially double”.

Issues due to remote location

While the microgrid has added immense value to the community’s life, it does face some challenges. Technical issues are difficult to fix because of the remoteness of the village — it would take the inverter supplier one flight to Bhubaneshwar, a 12-hour train journey to Bhawanipatna, a 6-hour bus journey to Gopinathpur and another 20 minutes of a bike ride to reach Maligaon. 

As a result, the microgrid has not been able to provide electricity 24×7 as designed. It can only be fixed if the solar panel and inverter suppliers are in Maligaon at the same time to address the possible causes. Because Maligaon is so far away, this is difficult to do. 

This leads to the second challenge: Microgrid maintenance entails turning off inverters and supply to recharge batteries, recharging the solar connection with a prepaid coupon system and maintaining cables and wires. All of these activities are undertaken by a single staff placed in Maligaon by Gram Vikas through which the microgrid was installed. 

This increases microgrid technical costs for the organisation, such as staff salaries in Maligaon, cable and wire replacement, travel expenses of inverter and battery company staff to Maligaon, etc. 

The microgrid was initially intended to be community-owned and operated. For now, only half the work for the microgrid’s self-sustenance is completed. The community paid Rs 1,000 per household for the solar connection and each household pays a monthly prepaid amount of about Rs 100. These funds are added to the bank account of the village water and sanitation committee (formed by Gram Vikas) for regular maintenance and minor technical issues.

Due to village politics and the need to turn the microgrid on and off based on voltage and coupon recharging methods, the non-profit has been unable to hand over the microgrid to the community entirely.

Additionally, the main livelihood source for the community in Maligaon is agriculture. Almost every household in Maligaon (barring one hamlet of nine households) relies on agriculture as their main source of income and the microgrid has not been able to power water pumps for agriculture during non-monsoon months. 

Barriers to powering farm water pumps

While Maligaon now has access to a microgrid with batteries of the latest technology, the nearest main grid supplier isn’t adequately prepared to work with it in a hybrid manner. As a result, the village still does not have a transformer or individual household metres that can power three-phase loads. The microgrid currently has households evenly divided across the three phases in order to avoid phase imbalances. The microgrid trips on adding the load of a single-phase water pump.

This means single-phase water pumps can’t be powered by the microgrid and the farmers who can get their hands on the pumps must rely on the erratic main grid supply for irrigation during the summer and winter months. Three-phase water pumps would require a suitable transformer and metre for the water pumps to work on both the microgrid and the main grid together, as the microgrid only supplies electricity at peak and evening hours. 

Maligaon only had one single-phase water pump running on the main grid up until September 2023. Through interventions to help farmers procure water pumps for irrigation, over 10 farmers can now irrigate their fields with four more pumps, but only through the main grid.

One would not expect Maligaon, being surrounded by rivers, streams and even a reservoir, to suffer when it comes to the availability of water. However, lack of access to electricity, knowledge and information, the village lags far behind. Since most of the land in Maligaon is uneven and located at an elevation, a large part of the community’s land is left uncultivated during the winter and summer months. 

“Our income will almost double if we get access to a water pump to irrigate our fields during non-monsoon months,” said Naik. 

The community now has access to farm mechanisation tools and prefers that the water pumps work just the way their bulbs do — on both solar electricity as well as main grid electricity. In order to do this, the village either needs a three-phase transformer or a single-phase microgrid. To put it concisely, the community has electricity available in the village for their main livelihood source, which they are unable to access. 

Now, the microgrid has an increased capacity of 16kW, making it more suitable for connecting larger loads once it works at its full capacity.

Some suggestions for assisting remote microgrids (that are operating at full capacity) to operate efficiently include focusing more on net-metering, so that excess energy produced by the microgrid does not go to waste and helps the community financially. The main-grid suppliers in rural areas can also work towards providing three-phase connections to all villages to increase the possibility of livelihood loads being connected there.