No power sockets in the wall...

What paradigms constrain innovations in ensuring electricity is available for all?

The world energy council recently published a very thoughtful report. Energy Scenarios 2050. Based on Accessibility, Availability and Acceptability of solutions that will ensure everyone in the world has access to modern energy solutions.

Four possible scenarios have been drawn up that elaborate on these. The future includes more solar power, bigger pipelines for natural gas, technology enabled turbine solutions, green initiatives, sustainable energy policies…and a lot of good English.

Somewhere it fundamentally assumes that everyone in the world wants to plug an equipment or an appliance into a wall socket and draw energy from there to fulfill everyday needs. And so, naturally, the areas of innovation become:
1. How to get more power to that wall socket, with lesser losses
2. How to get cleaner, greener power to the wall socket
3. How to get this power to reach more people (especially the poor and unserviced), more effectively.

And these questions map the current paradigm of new electricity solutions. What could be a radical new question that we could ask ourselves that would fundamentally alter our approach to energy solutions?

A few hour’s drive from Lucknow are villages like Parora and Seri. Electricity is infrequent. A village gets an average of 5-6 hours of power supply daily. Intermittent supply, fluctuating voltage and availability for a bare handful of hours during the night. Never really enough for irrigation, or home appliances or running a computer or charging a phone or any of the million things you believe you need electricity for…

One enterprising villager I met in Seri told me that he has found the solution for lighting up his home. Flashlights. He removed all bulbs and tube lights from his house and instead hung flashlights in every room. Without any electricity reaching the village he found that the bulbs were pretty useless most of the time. And the fluctuations in power meant frequent replacements. A heavy expense for an ordinary villager. But flashlights? How does that light up a house? What about batteries? Isn’t that expensive? And strength of the light?

What he held in his hand was an LED handheld torch from Eveready. Priced at Rs. 90 per piece, this is taking over the market from Philips in the bulb and tubes category in villagesor Uttar Pradesh. A torchlight that gives out powerful, clear, white light, uses 2 cells, can run for 3-4 months on 2 cells at 5-8 hours per day. What I walked into was a rather well lit room.

No wall sockets being used.

Another villager took me to the terrace of his house to show me the V-Sat dish installed by ITC, to help him run his e-choupal center. But what I noticed was that his was not the only house with a dish. Almost every household had a small ‘chatri’ as a dish is locally called – a satellite television connection.

In that village almost 80% of the households have a television and a Chinese made DVD player. DVD films are very popular. They can be bought for as little as Rs. 10 per DVD and have 2-3 films included in each disc. Picture and sound quality is rather bad. But quality is not the primary driver here. Need for entertainment is.

How are these powered? A little battery box in each home that provides an alternate source, combined with a few entrepreneurs in the village who own diesel generators. If regular electricity supply cannot recharge their batteries, the Villagers take their batteries to the generator point and charge their batteries for a few rupees per hour at the generator. A self-sustained ecosystem. No plug sockets in the wall.

These are small solutions.... within an ecosystem starved of the traditional solutions. And they may have a high carbon footprint....but maybe we need to take our learning from here - and not from the most advanced laboratories. No wall sockets. No wires. Self-generating. Ecological. locally creatable. What would be the paradigm shift for electricity solutions?