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Although the fine print of this pledge leaves many households in the dark, the promise of relatively cheap conventional grid power was enough to dissuade many potential microgrid customers. Legitimately, the Government of India has made truly impressive strides towards its promise to provide electricity access for all. In some cases, local politicians had made election promises that a connection to the centralized grid was imminent. Many villagers were holding out for “real” electricity. In the end, the company was only able to deploy microgrids in 10 villages. They visited 176 of these unelectrified villages to actively market their microgrids. The company did research to identify villages that were unlikely to gain conventional grid access in the foreseeable future. The first challenge arose when Gram Power went looking for customers. Nevertheless, they ran into problems…Īn adventure we encountered at one of our microgrid sites They designed smart meters capable of detecting theft. They offered connection packages for commercial loads. They hired and trained local villagers to help run the systems. When recruiting customers, they convened community meetings to gauge demand. Our paper goes into more detail, but, in short, Gram Power followed many of the industry best practices.

Customers could add higher wattage appliances, like refrigerators and fans, but continuous supply for higher wattage appliances wasn’t guaranteed. In terms of reliability, households were promised 24/7 power as long as they limited their consumption to basic services, such as cell phone charging and lighting (customers were given a CFL bulb as part of the connection package). If all households paid for the power they consumed, and if the solar PV systems operated reasonably efficiently (~13% capacity factor given the local operating conditions), the company projected cost recovery in about 6 years. Gram Power planned to charge its customers just enough to cover its after-subsidy costs: A one-time 1,000 INR (~$20) connection fee, a per kWh charge of 20 INR per kWh ($0.40/kWh), and 150 INR per month fixed charge ($3). At the time, the government was subsidizing private sector microgrid providers as part of a large-scale effort to extend electricity access to all. We received grant funding to deploy about 40 Gram Power microgrids in rural Rajasthan, India. Following a visit to India in 2013, Tom Friedman featured Yash in his New York Times column, saying, “The most exciting innovation I saw here was Gram Power.” The company has been widely recognized for its innovative solutions to rural electrification challenges. Gram Power’s original goal was to allow unelectrified, rural communities to transition from no power to a smart grid system that integrates off-the-shelf solar panels, modular battery storage, inverters, and a pre-payment model. We partnered with a startup, Gram Power, founded by a UC Berkeley grad, Yash Khaitan.

And, we think there are some important lessons in our project’s fizzle.Īs we explain in our new working paper, we set out to evaluate the real-world performance of a promising solar microgrid technology in remote areas of India where conventional grid power is very expensive to supply. Our recent experience with a solar microgrid provider in India has fallen short of these expectations. By 2030, the International Energy Agency is projecting that microgrid systems will supply almost half of newly connected households. Governments, private foundations, and international aid organizations have launched ambitious microgrid initiatives to enable rural electrification and promote economic development. In the developing world, the technology has the potential to bring a clean, small-scale, self-contained electricity supply to remote areas where a connection to the centralized grid would be relatively expensive. Microgrids are viewed by many as a transformative solution for the future. And, it’s as important to learn from the failures as it is to extrapolate from the successes. Sometimes technologies don’t take off the way we think they will. Nuclear power was supposed to be, “ Too cheap to meter.” The infamous Segway was supposed to transform the way our cities function. Microgrids are difficult to implement and can be undermined by promises of grid expansion. (This post is co-authored with Catherine Wolfram and Derek Wolfson, Energy Institute PhD student researcher )