The solar revolution is here!

WE congratulate the government and the Infrastructure Development Company Ltd. (Idcol) in making it possible for 15 million rural people to get the benefit of electricity. That so many people now have access to power for operating television to mobile phones and bringing light to village markets has fundamentally changed the rural way of life. It has ushered in an era of new economic activity as we see the proliferation of solar pumps to water agricultural fields. That technology alone opens the window to saving valuable foreign exchange needed to import diesel to power approximately 1.4 million conventional shallow tube-wells to irrigate our farms is a liberating thought.

The plan ahead is to install a further 3 million Solar Home Systems (SHS) in the next three years. The ability to meet that target would to a great extent depend upon the ability to bring down the cost of the SHS to make them more attractive to the people in off-grid areas. Idcol has demonstrated its ability to power up those communities in remote areas which had been deemed to be uneconomical to get connected to the national power grid. That the initial target to finance 50,000 SHS by June 2008, was completed three years ahead of schedule showed the potential of the programme and peoples' acceptance of renewable energy as the energy of choice.

The project has proved itself to be the world's most successful largest off-grid renewable energy programme and we hope that efforts will be made to expand it so that larger sections of the country may benefit from this clean technology.