A cautionary tale for a world racing into renewables: The large majority of mini-grids in India no longer work, an environmental group found
July 31, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EDT
But maintaining these solar systems has proved to be more than the government can handle, leaving deserted panels and batteries far and wide.
India’s experience is a cautionary tale for a world that is racing into renewables, installing solar energy systems at a breakneck speed with scant planning for how to maintain them in the years to come.
“We are rushing to find solutions. I don’t think we are thinking through the unintended consequences of the solutions that we are promoting at this time,” said Anurag Danda, a director in the World Wide Fund for Nature in India. “We might be creating a second-order problem — fixing something here, but creating a problem somewhere else.”
About 4,000 solar mini-grids have been installed in India, of which 3,300 are government financed and owned, according to information collected early this year by Smart Power India, a subsidiary of the Rockefeller Foundation, and provided to The Washington Post. Only 5 percent of the government grids are operational, the group found.
With much publicity, the eastern state of Bihar launched its first “solar village” in 2014. By 2021, Mongabay-India reported that the village’s power station had been turned into a cattle shed. A study by Aviram Sharma, a university researcher in Bihar state, found that almost half of the village’s solar connections went out of use within two years. According to another report, by Mongabay-India, the first solar village in the nearby state of Odisha met a similar fate.
“There is a lot of sunken cost for the deployments which are not working,” said Abhishek Jain, a fellow and a director at the Indian think tank the Council on Energy, Environment and Water. “It’s a waste of public and philanthropic money — mainly because we didn’t manage the technology well.”
The equipment that has been installed is a combination of domestically produced and imported, primarily from China.
In Barbera, a remote hamlet of 300 Indigenous people in Jharkhand state hemmed in by railway lines and water channels, rows of solar panels stand out against the bright-green paddy fields. The blue sheen of the panels has faded with time, and the glass has been cracked for several years. Shrubs blooming with pink and yellow flowers are reclaiming their place amid the ruin.
The system, installed in 2017, worked for one or two days and then stopped, according to several local residents. The state’s renewable-energy authority confirmed that the grid was defunct.
“What will we do with this useless solar?” asked Salasuis Burh, an elderly man standing near the remains of the solar system, an array of panels looking like rows of resting dominoes. “We want real electricity.”
Young village boys have rejiggered the wires so a few phones at a time can be charged. The solar panels still generate energy, but the batteries to store the electricity and the network to distribute it no longer function.
India is not alone in facing the challenge of solar power maintenance. Nor is the issue a new one.
A team of Dutch researchers reported in 2017 that in a sample of 29 solar systems in sub-Saharan Africa, only three were fully working. “The reasons cited for failure always point to the same challenges: an absence of local maintenance expertise and a lack of acceptance,” researchers said in an article published by the Conversation.
An Indian solar expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share closed-door conversations, said that the Ugandan government is seeking international help because 80 percent of its 12,000 local solar connections in health-care centers are out of service. Journalistic reports from Nigeria depict a similar situation.
“If you look at our landfills at a global scale, this will lead to a … problem. The toxic material can leech out. And, wherever the panel is sitting, that…
Read More: Most of India’s rural solar systems no longer work due to poor maintenance