'We must go from a tenth of a kilowatt to a kilowatt level economy for every home'

Columbia Knowledge Series

- Dr Vijay Modi

How do we leverage the revolution in solar for India, for farmers, for households and even in cities? I think it's important to acknowledge that India started with the Green Revolution in the mid 1960s, becoming food secure, which took several things. It took seeds. It took fertiliser, water, markets, minimum support price and public distribution system. But it also took power.

We extended grids, not just to the homes, but to each farm. When I work today in many countries in Sub Saharan Africa, farmers are desperate to have that. We accomplished that 30-40 years ago.

Now how do we steer this amazing achievement towards solar for lower cost power? India is acknowledging that individual solar pumps for farmers may not always be the best for small-holders, but the good news is we have electricity distribution networks. So if you have a substation and a line running from there serving a few 100 farmers, called a feeder, if we put a much larger solar power system, not a few kilowatts, but 1000 kilowatts, at that feeder, then we can continue to utilise that solar and deliver it to the farm without the farmer having to maintain it.

There are many advantages to this. In May, when we discourage use of irrigation because evapotranspiration can be very high, air conditioning load for homes is high—solar power from these feeders can relieve the grid load at that time.