Powering specialized products and services

A number of social enterprises use renewable energy sources to power products or services that require an otherwise-unavailable power source to operate. In these cases the purpose is not providing the customers with power, but delivering a specific service or accomplishing a specific goal that benefits underserved populations.

 

2 Main Categories

• 1) Enterprises which themselves provide services, such as education (Shidhulai Affordable Technologies), to off-grid areas and use renewable technologies to do so.
• 2) Enterprises which have developed products that enable certain tasks or service providers to function off-grid. Examples are energy-efficient milk chillers

 

Its plan to address this problem by connecting the regional grids into a unified national grid with UHV transmission lines, which would allow electricity from areas with surplus power to be transmitted to electricity-deficient areas during regional shortages. For example, during the summer, electricity from northern and central region could be transmitted to the Southern Power Grid to make up for increased demand that air conditioning usage creates. This would also improve the overall efficiency of the system. The government seeks to have 8 of these lines completed by 2015 and 15 completed by 2020. In addition to reducing regional shortages, these UHV lines would pave the way for a series of large hydroelectric projects.