Tata Power and The Rockefeller Foundation Announce Breakthrough Enterprise to Empower Million of Indians with Renewable Microgrid Electricity
Today, Tata Power and The Rockefeller Foundation announced the launch of a major new initiative to set up Microgrids, which will address one of the most pervasive challenges in modern India: the lack of access to affordable, reliable electricity for millions of rural homes and enterprises. By scaling up an innovative microgrid model to be implemented in collaborationwith Smart Power India (SPI) and the Institute for Transformative Technologies, TP Renewable Microgrid Ltd. will provide clean power to nearly 5 million households, directly impacting the lives of 25 million people over the next decade.
This unique collaborationwill amplify the Government of India’s ongoing campaign to provide electricity to rural areas, unleashing the potential of renewable microgrids to serve households and businesses that suffer from poor reliability and coverage by traditional grid-based power.
Rural businesses and households continue to rely on alternative sources to power daily needs—with more than 40% of rural enterprises in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh relying on non-grid sources of power such as diesel. TP Renewable Microgrid Ltd. will provide a competitive and cleaner source of power, expanding access and lowering effective electricity costs and carbon emissions by 1 million tons per year as well as reducing the amount of diesel burned by 57 million liters yearly. Over time, the opportunity to deploy grid-interactive solutions will materialize, creating a more integrated, stable and smart rural grid.
TP Renewable Microgrid Ltd. will be operated and managed by Tata Power, India’s largest integrated power company with approximately 11,000 MW of installed generation capacity and over 2.6 million customers under management across Delhi, Ajmer and Mumbai. Tata Power brings significant experience in distributed energy, having established a joint venture with Delhi government to serve a large portion of the local population, including sizeable slum communities...