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Physical access to energy does not guarantee access to energy services in a household. According to the World Bank database, 84.52 per cent of the total population of India have access to electricity. Despite the ambitious electrification plan embarked on by the government, there exists a gap between the electricity supply and electricity demand. One way to fill this gap is through commercially oriented distributed renewable energy (DRE)1 solutions. These solutions enable availability of power not only for basic lighting purposes but also for productive use such as tailoring, micro cold storage, printing, milling etc.
An analysis on the potential of this solution viz. Micro grids for an urban and a rural state has been undertaken. A state selection matrix has been developed to identify the two states for the assessment. The market segment for a grid-connected micro grid in India was identified. The potential applications of this type of micro grid was found using secondary research. The potential for each application was calculated to find out the capacity in MW or MVA. These values were further projected for the next 20 years to identify their long-term potential, if any. A qualitative assessment of distributed generation technologies for microgrids from an Indian context was also accomplished.
Keywords: Distributed Renewable Energy Solutions, Energy Access, Microgrids, Microgrid Projections, Energy Attributes
