SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy
International Conference
The social benefits of renewable energy, which favors renewable energy
adoption, include:
• Provide clean, green, reliable, pollution free, low emission and distributed
technology power
• Saves from high-running cost of generator and increasing diesel cost
• The hybrid system gives quality power out-put of 48 volt DC to charge
directly the storage battery.
• The system can be designed for both off-grid and on-grid applications.
• Efficient and easy installation, longer life
• Low gestation period
• Low operating & maintenance cost
However, electricity, unlike fuel, cannot be stock-piled. For the most part, it
must be created at almost the instant it is consumed. And much electrical energy
goes to waste, as when wind farms are taken offline because they are producing
more electricity than is needed. (Korosec 2011) Industrial and academic researchers
are trying to solve these problems with new large-scale energy storage technologies.
Notable contenders include scaled-up lithium-ion batteries and liquid metal
batteries. To date, lithium batteries have been relatively expensive and short-lived.
To try to overcome these drawbacks, startup Seeo is replacing the batteries’ usual
liquid electrolyte with solid polymers. As well as lasting longer, solid polymers
allow the batteries to store more energy.
To account for the savings on kerosene or firewood burnt, we take the help of
our literature survey to support this fact. A survey (Singh 2011) had been carried out
in a cluster of 5 villages in Badlapur block of Jaunpur District of eastern Uttar
Pradesh in 2004. The cluster of villages chosen comprises of five villages viz
Rampur, Dhiva, Chowkvia, Khetaria, Bahra. These villages are under Tiyara tahsil.
There are 529 household in the cluster. From the survey, the present energy
consumption pattern in cooking, lighting, other domestic activities, agriculture and
allied activities, rural industry and transport has been worked out. Total firewood
equivalent consumption of biomass fuels per household as calculated by the survey
is 2.14 Ton/Yr.
The survey (Singh 2011) covered the willingness of the villages to adopt the
renewable energy systems instead of traditional devices. The following numbers of
renewable energy systems as given in table 4 are proposed to be implemented in a
period of five years in different villages of the cluster. In order to assess the benefits
of the recommended systems the table also provides the cost benefit analysis in
terms of energy saving in fuel utilization and also in monetary terms taking the
firewood cost as Rs.1500/ton, cost of diesel as Rs. 35/l and the cost of electricity as
3.75/kWh. Total energy saving in terms of wood equivalent will be 456.921tones/yr