Electrification in rural areas of India and consideration of SHS

Rural electrification is an integral component of poverty alleviation and rural growth of a nation. In India, electricity has not played effective role in the socio-economic growth of village. Government of India has ambitious target of providing electricity to all villages by 2008 and all rural households by 2012. Steps are initiated with Rural Electric Corporation, State Electricity Boards, Reforms in Power sector. Ever increasing demand of electrical energy is causing a large gap in generation and load demand. All the requirement of energy cannot be fully met with conventional grid supply so, an alternative energy source has to be found out for this purpose. Therefore it has become necessary to explore the applications of distributed energy sources which are inevitable to meet the energy requirements. An attempt has been made in this paper to assess the features of rural electrification in India and a simple cost comparison of Solar Home Systems (SHS) with grid supply in deep rural areas.