Rural areas lack electricity for about 87% of the population. ESA is now launching a new initiative to support feasibility studies in collaboration with IESA. Join the India Energy Storage Alliance for more interesting articles. Sign up today!

1. Space Technology to Fast-track Prime Minister Modi's
Energy Access goals in India
Microgrids -- distributed systems of localized generation, distribution network, and load --
are being increasingly deployed particularly in rural areas of emerging and under-developed
countries to achieve energy access. Approximately 87 % of the people without electricity
live in rural areas characterized by remoteness and sparse population density.
The traditional approach to serving these communities by extending the central grid has
been proven to be ineffective due to a combination of factors such as capital scarcity,
insufficient energy service, reduced grid reliability, etc.
India has been a pioneer in rural microgrids since the 1990s, however, there is significant
progress to be made despite rapid advancements in technologies like solar PV, energy
storage, and affordable LED lighting solutions.
India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) estimates that India has installed over 2000 AC
microgrids of over 5 kW and over 10,000 DC microgrids with the majority sizing less than 1
kW.
There are many challenges that have restrained the growth of this sector including
numerous financial, technical, and social limitations. Project operators on several occasions
do not have clear answers themselves to recognize why microgrids are prematurely failing
or operating at lower efficiencies.

2. Interestingly, funding agencies, investors, and equipment suppliers are often surprised by
sudden news of the failure of assets or technical audit reports undermine the poor
functionality of mini-grids or microgrids.
As it could be guessed, these microgrids are remotely monitored with manual reporting or
not monitored at all. And hence, the inaccessibility of data, in this case, has led to a lack of
analysis and knowledge generation.
In many of the cases, project owners and operators are not be blamed as poor telecom
connectivity and the high cost of remote monitoring at a remote location has plagued data
acquisition and analysis.
India Energy Storage Alliance, with its vision of making microgrids economically
sustainable by understanding and addressing common modes of failure on its MICRO
platform and the European Space Agency (ESA), with its aim of bringing satellite
communication technology for the very bottom of pyramid applications to create a net social
impact, have partnered to resolve this problem statement.
In collaboration with IESA, the European Space Agency is now launching a new initiative to
support feasibility studies which identify and explore business opportunities for deploying
services based on Satellite Communications, Earth Observation data, and/or other space
assets to support the decentralized management of microgrids in India and other
developing countries.
The study is expected to culminate in a funded microgrid pilot project demonstrating the
potential of the above services. Requirements from Indian microgrids stakeholders will be
collected by IESA and provided by ESA to the consortia whose proposals are accepted.
India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) on 15th August 2016 launched the "Microgrid
Initiative for Campus & Rural Opportunities (MICRO)" whose main goal is to reduce
electricity costs for microgrid consumers by 30-50% within the next three years through
technological & policy innovation.
MICRO aims to develop microgrids as an enabler for the economic transformation of
regions currently suffering due to poor access to electricity. The IESA team believes that
microgrids in India have vast potential to transform the economic landscape in rural India as
well as provide improved power quality for consumers in urban townships to critical
infrastructures like hospitals and university campuses.

3. To achieve this dream, the sector would need to be organized. The MICRO portal
(http://micro.indiaesa.info/) that brings together microgrid developers, technology providers,
financing partners, and the local community was launched at a workshop at IIT Bombay on
19th August 2016.
IESA is also working with partners such as Global Energy Storage Alliance and Alliance
for Rural Electrification to extend this initiative to Asia and Africa, offering a tremendous
commercial opportunity to developers and service providers.
Become a member of the Energy Storage Alliance of India by joining IESA.