Implications of decentralised energy planning for rural India

The objective of this study is to develop a mathematical model for the effective utilization of renewable energy sources in a developing country like India. Decentralized energy planning (DEP) is in the interest of efficient utilization of resources. DEP is one of the options for meeting the rural and small scale energy needs in a reliable, affordable and environmentally sustainable way. The main aspect of the energy planning at a decentralised level would be to prepare an area-based DEP to meet energy needs and development of alternate energy sources at least-cost to the economy and environment. The geographical coverage and scale reflects the level at which the analysis takes place, which is an important factor in determining the structure of models. DEP planning
involves multiple objectives and different kinds of constraints. The kinds of objective functions and constraints which have to be
included in the DEP have been presented in the current work. The model developed here has been applied to a typical Indian block
unit, Kunigal, which comprises several villages. Based on the analysis made in the present work, it is found that biomass-based energy systems have the potential to meet all the energy needs of Kunigal block.