LEARN3 - Mission 3: Who else is inventing creative, sustainable ways to power our everyday lives?

Basic facts about India's electricity supply
More than 65% of India's population lives in the countryside which contains more than 60 000 villages. Many of them are situated in rugged terrain and inaccessible locations. This is the reason why most of these remote villages are not connected to the national electric power grid. Some villages have a very irregular electricity supply whereas other villages have no electricity at all.

Innovator Manoj Sinha
Indian student Manoj Sinha grew up reading using a gas lamp or traveling to far away places for electrical supply. Due to his energy starved childhood, Manoj Sinha dreamt of bringing power to villages like his. His dream came true when he chose to participate in Dell's annual "Social Innovation Challenge" with his friends Ratnesh Yadav and Charles W Ransler. Their idea of using rice husk to produce electricity for villages placed first in DSIC 2008.

Rice husk power systems
The idea was simple: Use rice husks, a renewable resource, to produce cost effective, clean, environmentally friendly and locally generated electricity. This idea minimizes difficulties associated with centralized power generation and its insufficient and low distribution. Today, villages get uninterrupted power for more than 10 hours a day by setting up a plant and using this unique green technology. Many households have been literally lifted out of darkness with this self sufficient power supply.

The success of HPS

• Low cost power and affordable for almost all households in India.
• Farmers have reduced irrigation costs by 45 percent.
• Dramatically reduced cost/lumen-output ratio for households.
• Productivity increases because fuel doesn’t have to be procured on foot from cities that are usually far away.
• Ash from burning the rice husks can be used as fertilizer or as a low cost ingredient for cement.

• More than 50 tons of CO₂ have been sequestered.