Remote villages emerge from darkness to light

Under its two ambitious projects - Illumination of Remote Border Villages through Solar Energy under PM’s Package and Micro Hydel Projects for unelectrified border villages– APEDA, constituted under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, has illuminated 364 villages on the border with China and Myanmar this February. With it, at least 5852 households with 26,198 people in 523 hamlets have stepped into light.
The Agency’s venture to illuminate far flung villages, most of which are inaccessible by road, started paying dividends after the feasibility assessment showed that projects undertaken by the Hydropower department was incurring heavy financial losses.
“The idea is to illuminate all rural households with solar energy through the Solar Photovoltaic (SVP) technology, which involves direct conversion of sunlight into electricity,” said S K Sahi, Project Officer of Border Area Illumination programme of the APEDA.
Explaining that a number of solar photovoltaic cells joined together make a solar photovoltaic module necessary for harnessing energy, Sahi added that 9393 solar lamps have been distributed to villagers till date since the project began in 2003. The capacity of each unit of a solar lamp is 37 watt at peak, which is enough to illuminate one household in rural settings.
“The projects came up at a time when people almost resigned to the fate,” Sahi observed.
Tawang, East Kameng, West Kameng, Kurung Kumey, West Siang, Dibang Valley, Anjaw, Changlang, Upper Subansiri and Upper Siang have been covered so far under the projects.
Besides illumination through the SVP technology, the Agency is also implementing 67 micro-hydel projects with capacity ranging from 5 KW to 300 KW across the state. These, Sahi said, are scheduled to be completed by March 2011.

source:The Sentinel