Improving Sustainable Energy Access among SC/ST households in Chamarajanagar District of Karnataka – A pilot study
Modern energy access for basic lighting and cooking needs is fundamental to human development. In India there is a large gap between demand and supply of appropriate energy services. More than 40% of India’s rural households and more than 5% urban households do not have electricity and are primarily dependent on kerosene or wick lamps to meet basic lighting needs. A typical kerosene lamp provides between 1and 6 lumens per square meter (lux) of useful light, compared to the recommended lighting level of 50-300 lux for regular domestic use like reading, dining and cooking. This low lighting from kerosene lamps can adversely impact human health (especially eyes) and increase likelihood of fire accidents.
Four out of every five rural and one out of every five urban households primarily use solid biomass fuel like firewood, crop residues and cattle dung as fuel in traditional mud stove/ three stone fire for cooking. Such traditional cooking practice is characterized by low thermal efficiency (10 to 12%) and emits toxic smoke. Women (and accompanying children) cooking with a mud stove, particularly in poorly ventilated kitchens, are at increased risk from pneumonia, respiratory diseases, etc. Smoke from incomplete combustion of biomass during cooking also emits climate change agents like black carbon.
These issues create a huge opportunity for dissemination of off-grid lighting technologies that can provide reliable lighting during evenings and clean cooking technologies that can save fuel, reduce smoke in the kitchen and decrease cooking time substantially and minimise drudgery of collecting firewood.
The main activities of this project included demonstration and dissemination of improved biomass cook stoves and off-grid solar home lighting solutions combined with mobile phone charging, improving indoor air quality, fuel saving, ease of cooking, enhancing communication and thus reducing the drudgery among SC/ST people. Since this is a one off effort by DST and TERI for intervention of pilot level on enhancing energy access, awareness and training programmes were organized and technical know-how provided on the new technologies to village level energy entrepreneurs and end users of cook stoves and offgrid solutions among the SC/ST community. TERI selected Chamarajanagara district for the pilot level intervention as more than 77.10% of the population use biomass as fuel for cooking, and over 20% of households are yet to be electrified (census 2011). Often power cuts can go on for more than 8- 10 hours a day, and sometimes power supply is available only in single phase. The district also has a large SC/ST population.