Solar power in rural UP

Solar power in rural UP
Santosh Chowdhury, Hindustan Times

Four villages in Uttar Pradesh getting uninterrupted power supply since 1999-2000. Unimaginable? Not quite.

A series of small micro-processor based photovoltaic power plants installed in villages of Kalyanpur (Aligarh), Harriya (Basti), Sarai Sadi (Mainpuri) and Rampursawai (Jaunpur) has kept these villages fully electrified when conventional power supply disappeared for several hours in a day.

All the villages getting solar power at the rate of 100 kilowatt per hour through customised solar power plants were chosen by the state-owned Non-conventional Energy Development Agency (NEDA) and the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (MNES) as research and development projects.

“Solar power plants that take care of domestic lighting, street lights, submersible pumps and even TVs convert DC electricity from the “solar arrays” on rooftops to AC supply, which is fed into the local village power supply distribution network of high tension wires through an electronic distribution board,” a NEDA official said.

Power plants also provide “grid connection” to the lines of power distribution units and help in energy management through the use of micro processor-based systems to minimise transmission losses. A micro computer installed in each plant controls the functioning of the plant.