Social Entrepreneur Shows Solar Power is Cheap

The Indian social entrepreneur Harish Hande won the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award 2011 for his path-breaking work in the field of solar energy. He is quietly dispelling the Western myth that renewable energy is unaffordable and impractical for an average householder.

Harish Hande is the co-founder of Solar Electric Light Company of India (SELCO). Hande graduated from India's premier engineering institute Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts. His focus has been the socioeconomics of technology implementation rather than the technology itself. SELCO received financial support from E+Co., which is an international development organization supporting social innovation and social enterprises.

Hande says, "The fundamental (premise in founding SELCO) was how to balance social, economic and environmental stability at the same level. And to destroy myths like the poor can't afford technology, the poor can't maintain, and thirdly that you can't run a commercial venture while trying to meet social objectives." Hande refused to accept the notion that renewable energy was too expensive for the hundreds of millions of rural Indians with no household electricity at all.
 
SELCO has entered into partnerships with small banks across rural India to bring electricity to more than 100,000 village homes that had never before received electricity. The villagers own the solar systems and pay them off through flexible microcredit loans. This socially innovative approach has enabled electricity to reach areas where earlier top-down electrification programs failed to reach.

According to Hande, "solar loans" to the poor villagers have facilitated the process of financial inclusion in rural regions. The regional rural banks have played a key role in funding solar products, which has helped people living in rural areas. Hande explains the challenge faced by the poor due to lack to lack of electricity by giving the example of mobile phones. He points out that millions of poor Indians now own mobile phones but do not have the plugs to charge their batteries with. They have to spend a considerable part of their monthly income just to charge their mobile phones from commercial kiosks.

The implication is that in India the poorer people spend a greater percentage of their income on energy. An average poor person in rural India with an income of Rs. 1,600 per month spends about Rs. 155 on kerosene and Rs. 40 per month to charge the mobile phone. With a five-year financing, solar energy actually works out to be equal or cheaper. There lies the point that in rural India, clean, renewable solar energy is effectively cheaper than conventional energy.

Photo Credit: walker_M