Ending Blackouts, One Solar Lamp at a Time

By VIKAS BAJAJ

The blackouts in northern and eastern India last week helped highlight a basic fact of life in the country: many people here do not have access to reliable electricity. The humor newspaper, The Onion, perhaps summed it up best with this headline: “300 Million Without Electricity in India After Restoration of Power Grid.”

In lieu of power from the grid, many in India, including big businesses like the software outsourcing firms TCS and Infosys, rely heavily on the diesel generators for electricity, as my colleague Heather Timmons reported earlier in the week. But those generators are expensive to run even with government subsidies on diesel and are considered a major contributor to greenhouse gases.

For many Indians, diesel is not an affordable option, and the wait for a reliable connection to the grid seems like it will be a long one given the paralysis in policy making in New Delhi and slow pace of infrastructure de velopment around the country. As a result, many Indians have been left to improvise, often by burning driftwood or kerosene, an oil-based fuel similar to diesel.

But increasingly entrepreneurs and energy specialists are trying to find creative ways to meet India's electricity needs. While there are dozens of examples, I'll focus on two that I have learned about recently.

The Energy and Resources Institute, or T.E.R.I., along with others, has been working on a model to increase the use of solar lanterns in rural India. Though these devices are incredibly simple to understand â€" a solar panel charges them during the day so they can be used at night â€" they are still too expensive for many. (Basic lanterns cost as little $5, but hardy and more useful models can cost as much as $80.)

T.E.R.I., which is based in New Delhi, is trying to make these lanterns more affordable by making them available for rent for durations as short as one night. The institute's “Lighting a Billion Lives” campaign does this on a franchise model.

“You train one woman in the village,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the institute's director general. “She charges all the lanterns during the day, and she rents them out at night.”

So far, the campaign has reached 1,488 villages in 22 Indian states, according to its Web site. But Mr. Pachauri, who is also the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told me this week that this and other similar ideas have significant potential to bring electricity to many millions of people.

“A lot of the slack can be taken up by renewable energy technology,” he said. “There are several niche areas where renewable energy can be harnessed at a large scale.”

Another attempt to solve India's energy riddle comes from a small company based in Boston called Promethean Power, which is planning to move its research and development office to Mumbai .

The company has come up with technology that allows dairies to chill milk without using diesel generators. Its system does not rely on solar or other renewable power but instead tries to make the best of the infrequent electricity that many people in India get from the grid. It does that by capturing that power in a proprietary “thermal battery” it has designed that can store up to five hours of power, Sam White, one of the co-founders of the company, told me in a recent Skype conversation.

The battery is paired with the company's other invention, a device that looks like a Shiva lingam that, Mr. White says, chills the milk from room temperature to 4 degrees centigrade (39.2 Fahrenheit) in just a few seconds. That chilled milk is then kept cold using power from the battery until it is ready to be transported or sold.

The company has sold its systems to dairies like Hatsun in Chennai, Mother Dairy in Bangalore, Amul in West Bengal and Chitale in Mahara shtra. It has also applied its technology to cool freight containers used to transport fruits and vegetables.

“We have decided to move to India, both my business partner and I, to finally make this happen or go home,” Mr. White said. “We think there is a pretty big market draw for both the milk chiller itself as well as eliminating the need for a diesel generator. Our next big challenge is to ramp up.”

Of course, neither T.E.R.I.'s lighting campaign nor Promethean's chilling technology is going to solve all of India's energy problems. But they could have a significant impact in meeting certain specific needs faster than the government has been able to.

There are about 100,000 villages in India that are not connected to the grid, but many of them could get affordable power from solar panels and small power plants fed by biomass like crop waste, according to Vineet Mittal, managing director of Welspun Energy, a developer and operator of solar, wind an d conventional power plants.

“I think this is a huge opportunity,” he told me earlier this week. “Some entrepreneur has to start it.”