The Asian Regional Energy Initiative of the IEI

Village energy services

Dual-fuelled generation of electricity and water-supply in villages:

IEI's Rural Electricity and Water-supply Utility (REWSU) project had envisaged the establishment of nine village-based utilities, operating dual-fuelled (diesel-biogas) electricity generators.  Biogas was to be generated from cattle-dung purchased from cattle-owners and used to generate electricity for lighting and for pumping water to the homes.  An assessment was later made of the status of the REWSUs originally invested in and causes for their discontinuation.  It also provides more rigorous analyses of one of the plants that continued to operate.  Apart from performance indicators, the report includes a section on the lessons learnt from the REWSU project, deriving the necessary conditions for the successful functioning of such village utilities [click here].  

Energy enterprises for development in rural areas - the case of clean cooking fuel:

The objective of this project was to demonstrate a rural enterprise that delivers clean stove-fuel to every home, while sustaining this delivery through integration with income/employment generation.  An energy-development project was developed in a village in south-east Karnataka.  A dairy was established in the village; this consisted of the construction of cattle-sheds and related (e.g. water-supply) facilities, as well as the purchase of cows and training of staff for cattle-caring activities.  Eight biogas-digesters (of 8m³ to 10m³ each) were constructed adjacent to clusters of homes.  Cattle dung from the dairy is fed to these digesters.  Pipelines have been drawn from the digesters to the surrounding homes, so that biogas can be easily supplied for stove-fuelling.  This has replaced the burning of solid waste in the homes of the village, thereby reducing smoke and soot indoors as well as carbon emissions.  Sales of milk and manure help to support the operation financially.  The proposed scheme is rare because it includes all the families; it is also economically, environmentally and technically sustainable.  The project was selected for funding by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy through the 3^rd round of their Sustainable Energy Project Support (SEPS) programme [click here].

Powering a village sustainably – generating electricity from waste-based biogas:

A large proportion of homes in Indian villages do not have connections to electricity.   Even when connected to the grid, frequent supply shut-downs force the use of poor lamp-lighting.  Infrastructure for electricity generation and distribution are currently inadequate to meet the requirements of the large population.  Further, electricity generation has thus far been through conventional methods, often with adverse environmental impacts.  This project demonstrates a way of locally addressing these problems: it provides sustainable access to electricity through a village-based enterprise that generates electricity from local renewable resources.  A dairy has been established from which cattle-dung is regularly deposited in a 40m³ digester for the generation of biogas through anaerobic digestion.  A 20 kVA engine-generator running 100% on biogas has been housed adjacent to the biogas plant.  At present, electricity is supplied daily to the village, for a few hours at times when supply from the state-run regional distributing utility (BESCOM) is not available.  Efficient lighting through the use of CFLs has also been introduced [click here]. The project was selected for funding by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy through the 6^th round of their Sustainable Energy Project Support (SEPS) programme.

Value-addition to food-crop processing – converting banana plant waste to cooking fuel:

This project, currently in progress, aims to implement improvements along the food-growing and preparation chain.  Banana cultivation is being supported to assist small farmers.  Digesters have been constructed for anaerobic digestion of the banana plant waste that would otherwise have been discarded.  The biogas so generated will be supplied as cooking fuel to surrounding homes [click here]. The project has been selected for funding by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy through the 7^th round of their Sustainable Energy Project Support (SEPS) programme.