CSC & Tata Power to set up 10,000 Solar Microgrids Across Rural India

CSC has announced a collaboration with Tata Power to set up solar-powered microgrids and water pumps in rural areas across India.

The government’s e-governance services arm CSC has announced a collaboration with Tata Power to set up solar-powered microgrids and water pumps in rural areas across the country. To begin with, Tata Power has proposed to set up 10,000 microgrids to support rural consumers through Common Service Centres (CSCs).

CSC e-Governance Services India Managing Director Dinesh Tyagi said the collaboration will amplify the government’s ongoing campaign to provide clean and sustainable energy to households and businesses in rural areas. “This partnership will increase energy access and provide an economic opportunity to the company by providing off-grid or microgrid power. This will help rural customers move away from burning relatively expensive fuels such as kerosene and can provide basic energy services and meet economic needs,” Tyagi said in a statement.

Under the partnership, over 3.75 lakh CSCs will be involved in supplying solar water pumps to farmers and help in setting up microgrids in residential and commercial establishments in rural areas.

The partnership is initially expected to create employment for a minimum of two persons in each panchayat where microgrids are proposed to be installed, thereby leading to the generation of 20,000 jobs for rural youth.

CSC CEO Sanjay Kumar Rakesh said the association with Tata Power will help it reach out to farmers and rural enterprises with clean energy solutions and will not only create new employment opportunities for Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) but also offer Tata Power a grasp over the potential rural market.

The firm also stated that this association will also meet the energy requirements of CSCs and address the need of a 24-hours supply of electricity to BharatNet in villages. A micro-grid has been piloted in five villages of Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh and learning from this will be useful in the full rollout. And that it has also approached Tata Power with a request to support a rental model for solar water pumps that can be provided to 6,000 Farmer Produce Organisations (FPOs), which CSC is setting up to support farmers across the country.

In November 2019, Tata Power had announced the formation of its arm – Tata Power Renewable Microgrid (TPRMG), to set up 10,000 microgrids to provide power to 5 million homes across India. And a year later, the firm had announced the successful commissioning of its 100th solar microgrid project in a remote and small village of Ratnapur, Uttar Pradesh