The project will bring electricity to 4,875 people currently living off-grid in remote areas of India.
SunEdison is working with the Government of India’s Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and the Madhya Pradesh Urja Vikas Nigam state agency. The company will build and operate the facilities before transferring them to a public entity after five years.
“Solar is often the most practical solution in India's remote areas and building micro-grids allows for scalability as the need grows” said Pashupathy Gopalan, president of SunEdison Asia Pacific, Middle East and South Africa. “The project isn't just about economics, as part of our SunEdison Eradication of Darkness (SEED) initiative we take into account the long term social and environmental impact as well. We believe that a collaborative approach, where private enterprise works closely with the government sector, is a winning model for future solar development in the region.”
Construction of the micro-grids will commence in September 2014 after the monsoon season. They will be commissioned by December 2014 and will be completed under the REC's decentralized distributed generation scheme, which enables remote communities to generate the clean, reliable energy essential for their development through small, off-grid systems located in the community, rather than depend on expensive and time-intensive public infrastructure expansion.
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