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Demonstration Project in progress - Powering a village
sustainably: generating electricity from waste-based biogas
The
establishment of another village-based
clean-energy-development enterprise is in
 progress,
supported by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment
and Energy, through the 6th round of their Sustainable
Energy Project Support (SEPS).
The project consists of the establishment of a dairy, a biogas
plant, a biogas-fuelled electricity
generation unit, and through these, the extension of
electricity distribution and supply. The dairy provides
employment and income, with its waste being used as
sustainable fuel-supply for biogas-generation.
Electricity will be generated through a 100% biogas-fuelled
generator and supplied to homes for lighting and for any other
services, as required, when grid supply is not available.
The revenue from the sale of milk and digester-effluents (as
manure) will supply the required income to provide for any
additional operating costs, ensuring financial sustainability.
This enterprise is being established in Kempapura,
Ramanagara district, Karnataka state (south-west India).
The cattle-rearing centre has been constructed, and people
have been trained for the caring of cows and calves. The
construction of the biogas plant was completed simultaneously;
this plant consists of a cylindrical floating-drum digester,
as well as inlet and outlet tanks. The biogas digester
has been fuelled with cattle-waste and biogas has been
accumulating in the gas-holder. A pipeline has been
drawn to the generator room, and the engine-generator is now
being tested. [Click
here
for recent photographs].
Extension of sustainable energy services – Renewable
energy for food preparation and processing
 We
at IEI-Bangalore, continue to pursue our mission of
facilitating sustained access to improved energy services,
particularly for the rural poor. These services are
based on the conservative use of energy (i.e. more efficient
devices) and/or clean and renewable sources, for environmental
sustainability, and are linked with income generation for
economic sustainability. Our activities include in-house
research and field demonstration. Programmes in the
latter category include biogas delivery for stove fuelling to
every home in a village, based on a co-operative dairy-fuel
model, improved irrigation facilities to small farmers through
efficient water pumping and application systems, and
currently, village-based generation of electricity from a
renewable source (described above).
While our demonstration-projects have each served a village or
cluster of villages, we are also involved in further extension
of sustainable energy services. The highlights of one of our
projects -- Energy enterprises for rural development: the case
of clean cooking fuel [Click
here]
--
has been included in the brochure on Renewable energy
technologies for food preparation and processing of the
Wuppertal Institute’s “Wisions” of sustainability. Based
on case studies from various parts of the world, this booklet
provides useful information on improved biomass-fuelled
stoves, biogas-fuelled stoves, and solar-powered cookers,
ovens, and dryers. It summarises details on a range of issues
– technology, operation and maintenance, financing and
management, environmental and social impacts, lessons learnt
from
the project, and the possibility of replication. [Click
here]
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