Jaipur: The ghosts of the grid breakdowns that plunged half of India into darkness last week may continue to haunt us as the network remains susceptible to wild overdrawing by state governments in the face of increasing demand and poor capacity addition. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even as the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) meets on August 14 to get to the bottom of the blackouts, 22-year-old Yashraj Khaitan, a graduate from the University of California, feels that the power distribution network at the last mile level needs ‘eyes and ears connected to a brain’ which monitors consumption, generates a demand-supply response, eliminates losses and makes a 100% payment recovery. Khaitan, a Jaipur boy, has already demonstrated this through a micro-project in a village in Rajasthan, and says his smart micro-grid systems can be scaled up to solve power problems in urban localities as well. Sitting some 150km away from his customer’s location, Khaitan in Jaipur knows in real time how much energy a villager is consuming. But he never feels it necessary to track his consumer’s usage pattern as he is neither worried of the grid collapsing nor apprehensive about overload, theft, meter tampering and payment defaults by any of his customers at Khareda village in Tonk district. This is where his start-up Gram Power made a debut two months back, providing power to 200 people. He is more focused on how to build economies of scale so that hundreds of millions of people in rural hinterlands that are off the grid or receive intermittent supply, get affordable, reliable and clean power that would replace the carbon spewing costly kerosene and reduce the burden on the electricity grid. Last year, Nasa selected Gram Power’s technology as one of the top 10 cleantech innovations from around the world. Besides getting many grants and awards including initial support from Alibaba-.com, the venture has already received a seed-level private equity funding from a Swiss company. WATT AN IDEA! — HOW IT WORKS — Renewable energy-based generation installed locally in the village Distribution wiring is drawn in the village to connect each house Consumers provided a Gram Power smart prepaid meter Central Monitoring System is installed in the generation station that ‘talks’ to every meter Local entrepreneur purchases bulk energy from Gram Power Gram Power wirelessly transfers this credit to his/her energy wallet The entrepreneur uses this digital wallet it to sell energy credit in smaller amounts to the villagers, just like cell phone companies sell prepaid minutes Smart grids can cut losses by 6 times Jaipur: The ghosts of the grid breakdowns that plunged half of India into darkness last week may continue to haunt us as the network remains susceptible to wild overdrawing by state governments in the face of increasing demand and scanty capacity addition. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. “Gram Power is an innovation created in the US but with an understanding of India where age-old problems of pilferage, transmission losses and unreliable supply have not only crippled the sector but deprived almost half of its people from this basic necessity. The 10-month-old start-up, which has developed a smart micro-grid system, has already demonstrated that losses can be reduced by almost six times when compared to conventional grid supply, while ensuring 100% payment recovery,” says Khaitan, who dropped out of his Masters programme in the US to set up Gram Power in India along with his batch mate Jacob Dickinson. The architecture of Gram Power’s business strategy is mainly built around solar energy — setting up plants at village levels, linking them to Gram Power’s smart-grid system and an intelligent distribution network powered by smart meters. These meters, installed in houses, intelligently communicate with a central monitoring tem to desys- tect and eliminate theft, monitor consumer’s consumption, avoid grid overloading, forecast energy demand, and implement variable pricing as necessary. Khaitan says Gram Power’s prepaid model, which means 100% recovery, along with rupees per hour pricing brings lot of value as the customer knows how much balance and hour of power is left with his meter. Apart from increasing consumer awareness, the technology eliminates payment collection expenses — a great saving for electricity distribution companies. The pre-paid model works very much like pre-paid cell phone device facilitating the customer to recharge the meter from a village entrepreneur who is given an electronic energy wallet. “The benefits of close to zero leakages and harnessing the power of technology help us provide power at rates cheaper than what one spends on kerosene. Our technology uses up to 40% less power, 86% less subsidies, and 99% less CO2 emissions when compared with power from the conventional utility grid,” says Khaitan. Giving an indication of the cost advantage, he said that with Rs 50 recharge, one can power two CFL bulbs for 100 hours and recharge two cell phones. But people in Khareda village use the electricity for all household purposes. In order to avert incidents of grid failure witnessed last week, Khaitan believes that India should have more micro-grids as back-up facilities to unburden the main grids during peak demand situations and says the smart micro-grid system can be easily scaled up and installed on the existing grid.