First Solar to facilitate funding for micro-grid projects.

US-based First Solar, one of the world's leading solar module manufacturers and solar power plant owners, says it is willing to facilitate funding for micro-grid based rural electrification projects in India.

Solar plant-local grid combination is seen as a solution to the vast number of villages that have none or no meaningful electricity. A few hundred villages have been provided solar-based electricity by companies such as Mera Gaon Power, a start-up, and Minda NexGen Tech of the Minda group. But the challenge (and the profits) lies in scaling it up.

Government data show that 95.65 per cent of the 5.9 lakh villages have been
'energised', but to come under that definition it is enough if only 10 per cent of the households get electricity. Some 400 million Indians are said to be without electricity.

Minda NexGen Tech has done about 250 installations. However, all but one-tenth of them have been bought by companies to fulfil their CSR.

The scale-able model is where a village entrepreneur buys the solar-micro-grid system and supplies electricity to villagers, who pay him out of what they save on kerosene. 'Funding is not there for the entrepreneur-model,' says Praveen Bhasin, who heads the business in Minda NexGen.



HBL