Husk Power Systems in Nigeria

The enormous heaps of rice husks which have piled up in Abakaliki since the 60s are now the centre of attention. Recently in Abuja, Ebonyi State government in collaboration with UNIDO launched its GEF4 Project for Nigeria: Mini grid based on renewable energy using rice husk (biomass) to augment rural electrification. Our reporter visits the husk hills of Ebonyi.

Egypt is legendary for pyramids and Nigeria's answer to that is probably to be found in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State. Husk from rice produced since the early 1960s have been preserved in dump sites, towering above the rusty iron sheets of the Abakaliki Rice Mill market.

It is almost impossible to talk about Abakaliki without mentioning rice. The town is famous for its production of the grain and was said to have served the entire Eastern Region during the civil war.

With almost 300 stalls, the Abakaliki rice mill was established in 1957 and occupies a land mass almost the size of a football pitch. It has a combined 11, 000 ton capacity per month, 2,500 rice milling machines and 5,000 workers. These include rice millers, rice de-stoners, dust/rice husk carriers, rice blowers, rice blenders, bag stitchers, wheelbarrow pushers, loaders and mammy market traders. They are joined everyday by as many customers from across Nigeria.

This scene has as its backdrop the husk dumpsite, the hills of husks look like sand hills, giving off different shades of brown, and is estimated to be over 40-metres high. They are located in the valley-like end of the market and have caught the attention of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).

"Sitting there not being put to use is really not beneficial. In this era of renewable energy, this [rice husk] is rich biomass material," said UNIDO's country representative, Dr. Patrick Kormawa.

As a test run to this effect, the UN agency set up a model biomass plant in Ekwashi Ngbo, Ohaukwu local government area of the state two months ago. The demonstration plant is meant to use the surplus biomass resources for electricity generation through gasification of the biomass. The plant capacity is 25 kilowatt. For every, 35kilogramme of biomass is used to produce 25kw of electricity. Wood chips are currently being used as biomass.

Christian Itsuma, who mans the plant, explained that "the plant will be connected to serve the community's micro street lighting, MDG community hospital, power the micro palm kernel cracking outfit, ICT Center of Excellence for Hp LIFE, Renewable Energy study, ECP programme and community ICT HUB which UNIDO setup. Also the palm fruit digesting machine and rice milling machine and artisans like welders and tailor amongst others will benefit once it takes off fully when all preliminaries and testing are finished. In the long run it is intended to power a micro solar lantern manufacturing factory for village solar lighting."

A general worry is how readily available wood will be for the gasification plant. "We operate a 12-month cycle whereby if we cut wood in January it would have grown back by the next

January. A portion of land has been dedicated for this purpose." Itsuma explained as he fed the machine more wood chips.

According to him, when expanded, "We will be able to generate 120kw, 250kw and finally 500kw with all the necessary environment and supports in place."

It is hoped that the project will be replicated in other parts of the state and up-scaled.

To generate more biomass material for the plant, the state government, UNIDO and private investor, Ebony Agro Industry created three rice clusters at Osso Edda, Iboko and Ikwo, respectively. The clusters are expected to produce five tons, three tons and 12 tons of rice respectively and a total 30 tons per hour when fully operational.

The husk produced from the mills, according to Kormawa, will be more than enough biomass to generate electricity which after the state consumes what is need can sell the excess to the national grid.

Kormawa said the initiative came after observing that there were hundreds of old milling equipment which although produced, were not efficient as they emit smoke.

"The millers were organized into small groups and introduced to smaller more efficient machines which produce using environmental standards thereby reducing pollution."

The amount of rice produced at the moment he said will not be enough to power the perceived plant. "We urged the government to produce enough rice padding for milling which will produce feed stuck for the plant."

Rice prices have gone up since the move was initiated to relocate the Abakaliki rice mill to these three new sites. In Abakaliki, rice is sold by the bushel, rather than by buckets or tiers, as seen in other parts of Nigeria. A bushel which usually sold for between N3, 000 to N2, 500 now sells for N4, 500.

More have now turned to the hills of husks, looking for broken, discarded rice they can eat.

Just as our reporter approached the market, women on top of the husk hills were visible, sifting the chaff in wide-brimmed shallow baskets or trays held high above their heads. As they shake the baskets, only the chaff falls in front of their feet, making small pyramids. It takes skill.

A woman who called herself Nkem said, "It took me about one hour to sieve through and get this half bag of rice. The chaff (husks) in the other bag I will use to make fire when I am cooking."

Another, Christy, said she doesn't only eat it but, "My children sometimes hawk them. On the days they come along to pick rice here, whatever they gather is for sale."

Rice prices are not the only issue at stake here. The plan to relocate the mill has been strongly resisted, resulting in a legal battle between the state government, traders and other individuals who have stakes in the business.

Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Dr. Ifeanyi Ikea, says the relocation of Abakaliki rice mill is a matter of health and safety. "Rice is our major crop and from it we produce a lot of husk which we can convert to energy. Once we set up the biomass plant for this purpose it will not be safe for people to live and do business on a daily basis around the plant because of the emissions from the machine. The noise, vibration and all that."

But operators of the mill and their workers are not convinced, believing their means of livelihoods are at stake.

"If they say it is disastrous to us what of the people who will be manning the plant and working around there? Will they be immune to it?" asked Mr. Emeka Chikwelu, a trader in the market.

The News Agency of Nigeria quotes Chief Joseph Ununu, the Chairman, Abakaliki Rice Mill Company Limited as saying that: "The development has affected our sales and ultimately led us into series of difficulties."

A trader, Mr. Sunday Onah said, "When they said they were relocating us most people sold off what they had. That now gave room to others who didn't, to sell at whatever rates they wanted. Also this is really not rice peak season. Even though the cost is normally high at this time, but not this much, usually."

Back at the husk hills, the women are just as unhappy with the government's idea of relocating the market.

Adaora Ibiekwe said for over ten years, she cannot remember buying rice, as she started living close to the market with her family at about this time. "This is where I have collected all the rice we eat year in, year out. I don't want to imagine how much suffering removing this from here will bring on many of who feed from here."

At the moment, Abakaliki is dependent on the national grid for power supply. The combined efforts of the clusters are expected to generate about 1000 megawatts.

Electricity generation using rice husk known as biomass is a concept that started in India which uses a biomass gasifier that creates fuel from husks after it has been separated from the rice.

Dr. Kormawa explained the process involved. "The process of biomass gasification is a relatively old simple technique where the biomass is heated to very high temperatures in an atmosphere below one per cent oxygen. In this environment, rather than burn in flames, it turns into what is referred to as 'producer gas.'

"The husk is fed into the machine. Depending on how it is set up, there is a gasifier with filters which clean dust and other residue from the gas. There is also a generator from where the producer gas powers a turbine and then generates electricity."

What the Abakaliki people are losing with the relocation of the rice mill, it is hoped that they will gain in the generation of electricity with biomass.

Husk Power System in India:

Patna: When we hear the word innovation, we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions -- like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. To be sure, breakthroughs are vital: antibiotics and vaccines, for example, transformed global health. But as we've argued in Fixes, some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are underserved.

One area where this is desperately needed is access to electricity. In the age of the iPad, it's easy to forget that roughly a quarter of the world's population -- about a billion and a half people (pdf) -- still lack electricity. This isn't just an inconvenience; it takes a severe toll on economic life, education and health. It's estimated that two million people die prematurely each year as a result of pulmonary diseases caused by the indoor burning of fuels for cooking and light. Close to half are children who die of pneumonia.

In vast stretches of the developing world, after the sun sets, everything goes dark. In sub-Saharan Africa, about 70 percent of the population lack electricity. However, no country has more citizens living without power than India, where more than 400 million people, the vast majority of them villagers, have no electricity. The place that remains most in darkness is Bihar, India's poorest state, which has more than 80 million people, 85 percent of whom live in households with no grid connection. Because Bihar has nowhere near the capacity to meet its current power demands, even those few with connections receive electricity sporadically and often at odd hours, like between 3:00 a.m and 6:00 a.m., when it is of little use.

This is why I'm writing today about a small but fast-growing off-grid electricity company based in Bihar called Husk Power Systems. It has created a system to turn rice husk into electricity that is reliable, eco-friendly and affordable for families that can spend only $2 a month for power. The company has 65 power units that serve a total of 30,000 households and is currently installing new systems at the rate of two to three per week.

What's most interesting about Husk Power is how it has combined many incremental improvements that add up to something qualitatively new -- with the potential for dramatic scale. The company expects to have 200 systems by the end of 2011, each serving a village or a small village cluster. Its plan is to ramp that up significantly, with the goal of having 2,014 units serving millions of clients by the end of 2014.

Husk Power was founded by four friends: Gyanesh Pandey, Manoj Sinha, Ratnesh Yadav and Charles W. Ransler, who met attending different schools in India and the United States. Pandey, the company's chief executive, grew up in a village in Bihar without electricity. "I felt low because of that," he told me when we met recently in New Delhi. He decided to study electrical engineering. At college in India, he experienced the Indian prejudice against Biharis -- some students refused to sit at the same table with him -- which contributed to his desire to emigrate to the US. He found his way to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY, where he completed a master's degree before landing a position with the semiconductor manufacturer International Rectifier in Los Angeles. His job was to figure out how to get the best performance from integrated circuits at the lowest possible cost. This helped him develop a problem-solving aptitude that would prove useful for Husk Power.

He was soon earning a six-figure income. He bought his family a diesel-powered electric generator. As a single man living in Los Angeles, he enjoyed traveling, dining out and going to clubs. "I was basically cruising through life," he recalled. "But along with that pleasure and smoothness was a dark zone in my head." He began meditating -- and he realized that he felt compelled to return home and use his knowledge to bring light to Bihar.

Back in India, he and his friend Yadav, an entrepreneur, spent the next few years experimenting. They explored the possibility of producing organic solar cells. They tried growing a plant called jatropha, whose seeds can be used for biodiesel. Both proved impractical as businesses. They tested out solar lamps, but found their application limited. "In the back of my mind, I always thought there would be some high tech solution that would solve the problem," said Pandey.

One day he ran into a salesman who sold gasifiers -- machines that burn organic materials in an oxygen restricted environment to produce biogas which can be used to power an engine. There was nothing new about gasifiers; they had been around for decades. People sometimes burned rice husk in them to supplement diesel fuel, which was expensive. "But nobody had thought to use rice husk to run a whole power system," explained Pandey.

In Bihar, poverty is extreme. Pretty much everything that can be used will be used -- recycled or burned or fed to animals. Rice husk are the big exception. When rice is milled, the outside kernel, or husk, is discarded. Because the husk contains a lot of silica, it doesn't burn well for cooking. A recent Greenpeace study reports that Bihar alone produces 1.8 billion kilograms of rice husk per year. Most of it ends up rotting in landfills and emitting methane, a greenhouse gas.

Pandey and Yadav began bringing pieces together for an electric distribution system powered by the husk. They got a gasifier, a generator set, filtering, cleaning and cooling systems, piping and insulated wiring. They went through countless iterations to get the system working: adjusting valves and pressures, the gas-to-air ratios, the combustion temperature, the starting mechanism. In they end, they came up with a system that could burn 50 kilograms of rice husk per hour and produce 32 kilowatts of power, sufficient for about 500 village households.

They reached out to people in a village called Tamkuha, in Bihar, offering them a deal: for 80 rupees a month -- roughly $1.75 -- a household could get daily power for one 30-watt or two 15-watt compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and unlimited cell phone charging between 5:00 p.m and 11:00 p.m. For many families, the price was less than half their monthly kerosene costs, and the light would be much brighter. It would also be less smoky, less of a fire hazard, and better for the environment. Customers could pay for more power if they needed it -- for radios, TVs, ceiling fans or water pumps. But many had no appliances and lived in huts so small, one bulb was enough. The system went live on August 15, 2007, the anniversary of India's independence.

It worked. Back in the United States, their colleagues Sinha and Ransler, who were pursuing MBAs at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, put together a business plan and set out to raise money. They came first in two student competitions, garnering prizes of $10,000 and $50,000. The company received a grant from the Shell Foundation and set up three more systems in 2008. It has since raised $1.75 million in investment financing. In 2009, they

had 19 systems in operation; in 2010, they more than tripled that number.

Technically, most of the problems were solved by 2008. But to make the business viable has required an ongoing process of what has been called "frugal innovation" -- radically simplifying things to serve the needs of poor customers who would otherwise be excluded from basic market services due to their limited ability to pay.

In order to bring down costs, for example, the company stripped down the gasifiers and engines, removing everything non-essential that added to manufacturing or maintenance expenses, like turbocharging. They replaced an automated water-aided process for the removal of rice husk char (burned husk) from gasifiers with one that uses 80 percent less water and can be operated with a hand crank. They kept labor costs down by recruiting locals, often from very poor families with modest education levels (who would be considered unemployable by many companies) and training them to operate and load machines, and work as fee collectors and auditors, going door-to-door ensuring that villagers aren't using more electricity than they pay for. (Electricity theft is a national problem in India, resulting in losses to power companies? estimated at 30 percent. Husk Power says it has managed to keep such losses down to five percent.)

When the company noticed that customers were purchasing poor-quality CFL bulbs, which waste energy, they partnered with Havells India, a large manufacturer, to purchase thousands of high quality bulbs at discount rates, which their collectors now sell to clients. They also saw that collectors could become discount suppliers of other products -- like soap, biscuits and oil -- so they added a product fulfillment business into the mix.

And they found ways to extract value from the rice husk char -- the waste product of a waste product -- by setting up another side business turning the char into incense sticks. This business now operates in five locations and provides supplemental income to 500 women. The company also receives government subsidies for renewable energy and is seeking Clean Development Mechanism benefits.

With growth, human audits have proven inadequate to control electricity theft or inadvertent overuse. So the company developed a stripped-down pre-payment smart-card reader for home installation. The going rate for smart-card readers is between $50 and $90. Husk Power is near completion of one that Pandey says will cost under $7.

Alone, none of these steps would have been significant. Taken together, however, they make it possible for power units to deliver tiny volumes of electricity while enjoying a 30 percent profit margin. The side businesses add another 20 percent to the bottom line. Pandey says new power units become profitable within 2 to 3 months of installation. He expects the company to be financially self-sustaining by June 2011.

From a social standpoint, there are many benefits to this business model. In addition to the fact that electricity allows shop keepers to stay open later and farmers to irrigate more land, and lighting increases children's studying time and reduces burglaries and snakebites, the company also channels most of its wages and payments for services directly back into the villages it serves.

For decades, countries have operated on the assumption that power from large electricity plants will eventually trickle down to villagers. In many parts of the world, this has proven to be elusive. Husk Power has identified at least 25,000 villages across Bihar and neighboring states in India's rice belt as appropriate for its model. Ramapati Kumar, an advisor on Climate and Energy for Greenpeace India, who has studied Husk Power, explained that the company's model could "go a long way in bringing light to 125,000 unelectrified villages in India," while reducing "the country's dependence on fossil fuels."

It's too soon to say whether Husk Power will prove to be successful in the long run. As with any young company, there are many unknowns. To achieve its goals, it will need to recruit and train thousands of employees over the next four years, raise additional financing, and institute sound management practices. Many companies destroy themselves in the process of trying to expand aggressively.

But the lessons here go beyond the fortunes of Husk Power. What the company illustrates is a different way to think about innovation -- one that is suitable for global problems that stem from poor people's lack of access to energy, water, housing and education. In many cases, success in these challenges hinges less on big new ideas than on collections of small old ideas well integrated and executed. "What's replicable isn't the distribution of electricity," says Pandey. "It's the whole process of how to take an old technology and apply it to local constraints. How to create a system out of the materials and labor that are readily available."

Renewable Energy in India's Rice Belt: Husk Power SystemsSite: IndiaSector: Renewable energyChallenge: More than one billion residents of India have no electricity and many of them live in remote villages off the electricity grid.Solution: $750,000 in debt financing for Husk Power Systems Inc. to cover the installation throughout rural India of 36 “mini energy generation facilities” that burn discarded rice husks to generate electricity.Impact: Clean electricity provided to thousands of rural Indians.

Rice is a staple of the diet in India. But rice husks, the hard protective coatings that surround the rice, are typically discarded in the milling process. Back in 2002, two entrepreneurs looking for ways to expand

access to power and promote development in rural India discovered that some small rice millers were mixing these discarded husks with the diesel they burned as a way to reduce their diesel consumption and save money.

The team – childhood friends Gyanesh Pandey and Ratnesh Yaday -- had already explored ways to promote solar or wind power in rural India. But when they began to study the biomass properties of the rice husks, they realized that the technology needed to convert the husks to electricity was especially simple,and well suited to small rural villages with limited technical capabilities. The entrepreneurs recognized that, when not combined with diesel, the rice husk biomass could be gasified without emissions, resulting in clean energy for the local populations.

Electricity and light transform small villages

Pandey, an engineer who was working in Los Angeles at the time, and Yaday, an entrepreneur based in India, understood that the widespread lack of electricity was a key barrier to development. About one-third of the country’s population, spread across some 125,000 small rural villages, lack access to electricity. And although the Indian government had already adopted a number of policy reforms to increase power generation, these policies often did not benefit the rural villages that needed power the most, since many are located far from the country’s utility grid. To execute on the concept of rice husks as biomass, the team turned to Gyanesh’s college friends, Manoj Sinha and Charles Ransler, both graduates of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Ransler, who had previously headed a small software firm, and Sinha, a native of India who had worked for years as a microprocessor designer at Intel, helped to formally launch Husk Power

Systems with the prize money they won in various business plan competitions expounding on the off grid distribution model.  In 2008, for example, the Center for Social Innovation at the University of Texas named Husk the winner of the Most Compelling Idea to Change the World competition.

As a young business, Husk quickly demonstrated an ability to make a meaningful difference in the lives of rural Indians by establishing a series of strategically placed mini-power plants in remote villages.  Children now had sufficient lighting to do their homework at night and villagers reported an improved sense of security: When light came to a village, even reports of dog bites and snake bites declined. By the time OPIC learned about the business in 2008, it was a simple start-up, delivering power to only to two rural villages of about 1,000 people, but the founders had plans to expand into hundreds of additional villages over the next few years.In June of 2009, OPIC, which has made investing in renewable resources a top priority, committed a $750,000 loan to Husk Power for the development of an additional 36 rice husk-powered generation facilities. Although this deal was a comparatively small investment for OPIC, it was critical to Husk, which had been unable to obtain sufficient funding from the Indian government or private investors to cover its expansion. And because the technology used to convert rice husks to electricity is fairly inexpensive on an invidual basis, the OPIC money could be used to establish plants in many villages.

“OPIC’s funding was a game-changer for us,” said Husk President Manoj Sinha. “OPIC proved that a project like this was debt financeable, and could therefore offer attractive returns for venture capitalists and more conservative investors, by leveraging assets. It’s not easy finding a loan in India, so OPIC proved to be a real shot in the arm for us.”

Because there is such an abundance of rice in India, rice husks offer an abundant supply of renewable energy. In 2007, for example, India produced more than 141 million tons of rice. Every ton leaves about a quarter ton of rice husks, most which is dumped in landfill.

Mini power plants are simple to operate, managed by local villagers

Husk’s process for making electricity from biomass is based on gasification, in which the rice husks are heated to high temperatures, causing the materials to decompose into a mix of combustible gases. The gases are then burned to produce heat or steam that activates a gas turbine, and produces electricity.

Husk distributes power through a “point-to-point” system that connects each household or business directly to the power station through a main line. A village manager estimates the likely power consumption of each customer based on their lighting and appliance requirements and this estimate is used to determine an appropriate prepayment.

The basic connection through Husk provides a household with two 15-watt compact fluorescent lights, together with mobile phone charging throughout the period each day that the plant runs (up

to eight hours in the evening). Sometimes poorer households share a basic connection and get one light each. Households and business can also pay more for a higher power connection, however the system is designed so that a fuse blows if the customer attempts to use more than the agreed-upon amount. Each mini-power plant serves about 500 customers. Husk works strategically to locate in plants in remote villages where it can reach a large number of households. It has achieved an average penetration rate of 75% within the first two months of operation in a new village.One of Husk’s value propositions is to build plants that are so simple to operate and maintain that village people with limited education can be trained to manage and run them. The company trains a local operator, electrician, fuel handler and fee collector to run each plant and maintains a specialized regional staff to help with problems.

An attractive alternative – “Electricity from Rice Husk”Non availability of electricity / load shedding is a talk of the town and a tale of the villagers in Manipur. We have read and heard through local print and electronic media all about these issues pertaining to power supply in the State. Still, if we are a State Government employee it is mandatory to pay monthly taxes for the power connections we have irrespective of the power units consumed or not. Anyway, presently on one side, the only option left is to depend on Korea made Inverters or Generators depending on the affordability and satisfy ourselves, on the other, in addition to the professional tax paid by each employee, the power tax paid is a contribution to the state for being a Government servant. But the big question is how long the system will continue? It has become a universal truth that availability of electricity what we call power supply is the only catalytic agent  to facilitate participation in the global development trend.

Yes, there is a saying “necessity is the mother of invention and availability is the father”. Now, here is an attractive alternative to address the power issues at least to some extent particularly in rural areas who suffers most! Although, the application of biomass as a sustainable electricity source seems promising, it is still seldom perceived as an option for providing electricity for the rural poor. In order to generate electricity, biomass can be combusted, gasified, biologically digested or fermented, or converted to liquid fuels for propelling generators. Rice

husk is one available in plenty coupled with technologies and equipment. There is huge potentials for generating power from rice husk where rice mills are installed and husks are produced in plenty. In fact rice mill owners have been facing problems for disposal of these husks as these byproducts  contains very low nutrient and  takes longer time to decompose due to high silica content ranging from 90-97% thereby not favouring to use as manure. Although, 5% of the quantities of husks have been utilized for bedding by the poultry farmers and 15-20% as cooking materials for fuel, however the remaining 75-80% goes to wastes by way of burning in the open atmosphere causing immense environmental pollution. Besides many other feasible applications viz. raw materials for fabricating building materials as Panel Boards, Rice Husk Ash (RHA) as cementing materials and as biofuel for gasification; all these potentials remains untapped. The reason could be because we have never felt the necessity.

In Manipur, the area under rice is 1.95 lakhs hectare that yields around 5.85 lakhs tons of Paddy assuming at an average yield of 3 tons per ha. When milled these paddy produces about 1,17,000 tons of Husks at the conversion ratio of 5 :1 by weight of Rice : Husk. Now, assuming 50% utilization of the total husks produced as biofuel for gasification i.e 58,500 tons will possess captive power to generate 37,440 MW.

The principle behind this generation of power from rice husk is nothing but a process of  biomass gasification which means incomplete combustion of biomass resulting to production of highly combustible gases consisting of Carbon monoxide (CO),  Hydrogen  (H2) and  traces  of Methane (CH4). This mixture is called Producer Gas. Producer Gas can be used to run internal combustion engines (both compression and spark ignition). In short, this Producer Gas is used to run modified diesel engines to generate electricity.“Roughly 1.5 kg of rice husk generates1 KWh (kilowatt-hour) of electricity via an alternator and delivered in three phases at 220 volts” said Chip Ransler, Chief Strategy Officer of Husk Power System told IANS.

Husk Power Systems (HPS) Company is the brain child of an Indian born engineer Gyanesh Pandey together with his friends Ratnesh Yadhav, Manoj Sinha and Charles Ransler, that came into existence in Bihar since 2008 with support from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, USA. After five months of R&D, they developed a system that could produce 32 kilowatts of power by burning 50 kilograms of rice husk per hour.  As of March 2011, the Company  have installed more than  60 biomass mini-plants across Bihar, providing power to more than 32,000 rural households. Through this unique green technology, villages get uninterrupted power for up to 6-12 hours per day primarily at night at the affordable rates by setting up mini plants at different locations within the radius of 2 km.

Environmental and Social impacts.

1.  Husk Power Systems are cost effective and can provide reliable, and affordable electricity to rural population.

2.  Husk Power generates electricity from rice husks, avoiding the use of fossil fuels. The use of rice husks for fuel does  not  create competition with food crops since the rice husks would otherwise be agricultural waste.

3.Power transmission may be done through insulated wires upto maximum distance of 2 km to  avoid voltage loss. Locally available bamboo  posts  can be utilised  very effectively to support the transmission wires.

4. No pre-experienced technicians would be required but can be locally trained to operate the plant once units are set up thereby creating opportunities for employment.

5.  The power delivery system could be completely decentralised i.e run and maintained by the locals where the plants are installed.

6.  Project Implementing Agency (PIA) can be a partner in the Clean Development Mechanism  (CDM) program so that the Power Plant can sell carbon credits for the emissions reduced by the

plants. (i.e abandoning fossil fuel run generators by gasifying the husks thereby preventing the release of a considerable amount of methane gas,one of the world’s most potent greenhouse gasses.)

7.  During the process of gasification of rice husk the byproduct obtained is the Carbonized Rice Husk (CRH).To produce CRH, normally raw husk is burned without air so that it will not turn into ash.CRH is sterile and is free from disease organisms.CRH is also very useful in rice farming. It could be plaughed in during land preparation. This will make the land not only more porous for better plant growth, it will also enable the soil to retain the moisture much longer. Rice grown in fields enriched with CRH also produce more profuse tillers that will bear more grains.

8.  Each Mini power plant of 32KW can serve 400-450 households using 4-5 nos. of 15W CFL   and 8-10 small business establishments.

 Such prototype projects have been launched not only in Bihar but also in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkhand by the NGOs, Group of Entrepreneurs, Small  & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Cooperative Societies with support from Financial Institutions. For setting up such type of innovative and green energy projects, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India also extends support.

 Successful implementation of any type of project depends on the following basic factors;

* continuous availability of raw materials at the cheaper rates;

* availability of infrastructures with proven technologies for the end product;

* required human resources;

* market of the products / end users / consumers.

* capital.

Now, the choice is ours  – Whether we should exploit  these  abundantly  available bioresources for generating income and employment or Not; which otherwise will  go to waste !!

Electrifying India with rice husk

Published on Tuesday, 22 January 2013 11:45

The use of biomass gasification technology to convert rice husk into combustible gases and drive a generator to produce clean electricity at affordable rates, has been attracting considerable interest in the energy sector, reports Business Standard.

This technology is being promoted by Husk Power Systems, founded in 2007 by a US-trained engineering graduate Gyanesh Pandey and his friend Ratnesh Yadav.

According to Pandey, for more than 125,000 villages in India, access to electricity is a distant dream. Further, more than 25,000 villages have been declared economically impossible to reach via conventional methods.

Husk Power Systems employs about 270 people across villages where it has set up miniature off-grid power plants. These plants are fueled by rice husks, an agricultural by-product of the rice growing process. Once the plant is set up, the villagers take care of the rest of the operations and ensure its smooth run on their own.

These plants have found ready acceptance in Bihar and other rice-growing states in eastern India where husks are normally discarded into landfills where they rot and produce methane.

The government noticed what Pandey and his partners were doing and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy extended their subsidy scheme to fit the needs of the project. Pandey is ready to set up 2014 electricity generator plants by 2014. “We call it 2014 by 2014 and would like to light up 5,000 villages across India,” he says.

According to a report by the news agency Bloomberg, these power plants produce just 35-100kW, compared to an average coal plant which produces about 500MW, but have to serve far fewer people. The company builds a plant in an area, wires up 200-500 households, and then buys the agricultural waste at a pre-negotiated rate. Once that's complete, the villagers are charged for the electricity on a pay-for-use basis.

The first plant was inaugurated in August 2007 in Tamkuha, Bihar. The company identified a further 25,000 villages across Bihar and its neighbouring states as feasible sites for building power plants. Each site requires three employees -- an operator, an electrician and bill collector and a husk loader, and a minimum of about 185 square metres of ground, which is leased for a period of ten years, says the report.

Husk Power Systems Wants to Lead "a Revolution in Electricity"By Jenara Nerenberg|

January 5, 2011

With a simple but effective design that transforms rice husks into power, the Indian for-profit social enterprise is expanding at a rate of two plants per week. An ambitious agenda has them in up to 15 countries in 10 years--and serving some 15 million people.

Sometimes the simplest ideas can produce powerful results. Husk Power Systems (HPS) is premised on a simple need--for electricity--and a simple material--discarded rice husks.

The for-profit social enterprise was started four years ago by three Indians from the state of Bihar, along with one American classmate from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. Their design philosophy is "simplifying the system so much that even a high school educated villager could be trained and run our power plants," co-founder Manoj Sinha tells Fast Company.

It is this philosophy of simplicity and corresponding success that has earned them substantial investments from the Shell Foundation and Acumen Fund and the prizes of a host of social innovation business plan competitions--including the Santa Clara Global Social Benefit Incubator. Already 60 rice husk power plants are up and running, serving 60 villages and 150,000 people. Now there are plans to run a Husk Power University and an international franchising system.

"Everything makes us unique," says company co-founder Gyanesh Pandey. "Literally, I mean everything. We see this as a revolution in electricity. A revolution in power."

HPS officially started in 2007 after Pandey had been experimenting for years with how to supply power to India's most neglected, rural villages--places no access to power, many of which are in Pandey's home state of Bihar. "We originally thought that some super high-tech solution would fix the problem. We were proven wrong," Pandey says.

Pandey had spent nine years studying in the United States and went back to India in 2002 knowing he wanted to help his fellow statesmen, but he wasn't sure how. "I always had a complex about where I came from," Pandey says. "My parents lived in a village. We didn't have a lot of opportunities."

Solar and wind power options were too expensive and not financially feasible for the team--a solar panel would cost $1500 per kilowatt installed. They settled on rice husks at half that cost and now their plants each power 400-500 households for 7-8 hours per day, primarily at night. Their mission is to "liberate rural India from darkness," says Pandey.

Co-founder Sinha says that one key to their success so far has been the recruitment of reliable people on the ground. He says that in an informal economy such as rural India's, professional standards are low and it's a struggle to find quality people to work for the for-profit social enterprise.

But when it works, it works well. "The people feel like they own the plant---it's a serious community investment," says Sinha.

Pandey and Sinha see HPS as a system, as opposed to just a power, product, or services company. Engaging customers at the bottom of the economic pyramid has become an integral part of the brand. "Gyanesh Pandey means nothing without Husk Power Systems," says Pandey.

Now HPS is developing a franchising and University offering--both of which will catapult the company that much more onto the global social enterprise stage. The University is meant to enlist partners from across India who want to open their own HPS franchise--the partners receive training, provide a portion of the necessary capital, and shoulder some of the risk involved, such as hiring and maintaining quality staff on the ground. So far HPS has engaged NGOs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the goal will be to train partners to run the plants the way HPS would. Their model is "build, operate, maintain," with an eye on community and social impact. The company also runs a number of initiatives helping rural women with jobs and training.

HPS is also looking to expand to Nepal and Southeast Asia and eventually Kenya and Nigeria. Their success so far has surprised many of their social entrepreneur colleagues who at the outset thought they were too ambitious with their expansion targets.

Sinha says he has 20 questions that he asks of every foreign group that approaches them (they receive about 10-15 inquiries every day), as a way to filter requests. His questions include: "Do you know your country's energy policy? What kind of electricity uses do your target customers engage in? What does a community/village or small town look like structurally speaking? Do communities engage in local farming? Are there rice mills close by the communities?"

The company hopes to be in 10-15 countries in 10 years, serving 10-20 million people.

"We don't really think of ourselves of as having competitors," Sinha says. "The rural world is starving. There is such a large, unmet need and we are essentially an empowerment system. We've taken a huge leap and we have a huge lead."

Power Systems' biomass gasification plants. Photo: Harikrishna Katragadda/Greenpeace

“When you travel through Bihar at night,” says Ratnesh Kumar, co-founder of Husk Power Systems, “every place you see is dark. You don’t see anything.

“But if you travel during the day, no matter where you go you’ll find roads full of people in the remotest of places. Houses just next to the highway.” His voice is slow and steady, like his manner. “But people won’t light their lanterns for a moment longer than they need, as they are so poor.”

Bihar is one of the poorest states in India, in the north-eastern center of the country. In such lean conditions as in its villages, people waste very little. When Ratnesh and Gyanesh Pandey, Ratnesh’s childhood friend and the other co-founder of Husk Power Systems, first began to research the living conditions in these villages, they found that even the garbage gathered in the evenings was used in some way. “Villagers live in complete harmony with nature,” explains Ratnesh. In these stretches of darkened countryside, they found only one substance that was going to waste: the leftover husks of rice grains. Ratnesh and Gyanesh decided to use this one stray link to produce what the villagers most needed.

Their company, Husk Power Systems, now provides electricity for six to seven hours each evening, to about 100,000 people across 125 villages, using only rice husk.

The power plants that have achieved this impressive task are modest in appearance. A typical Husk Power Systems (HPS) compound is only 5000-6000 square foot of rented land with a small biomass gasifier on it, one storey tall and slim enough that two men could encircle it with their arms. Biomass gasification is a simple and relatively old process, in which biomass is heated to very high temperatures in an atmosphere of less than 1% oxygen. Under these conditions, it does not burn in flames, but turns into a ‘producer gas.’ In the HPS compound, there are large piles of biscuit-coloured rice husk for feeding the machine, and smaller piles of black rice husk char, which is the small amount of solid waste the gasification process generates in addition to the gas. Next to the gasifier are four filters for cleaning tar and dust from the gas, and a generator in which the producer gas is used to drive a turbine and create electricity. That’s it. From the compound run the HPS wires that carry electricity to houses within a maximum distance of two to three kilometres, because, beyond that, there begins to be a drop in voltage. To further increase efficiency, HPS also insist that customers may use only energy-saving CFL bulbs.

India’s rural electrification programme focuses on extending a main electricity grid, but there are many places it hasn’t reached yet, and it’s estimated 40 million people in the country still have no electricity connection. HPS focuses its attention primarily on villages that are off-grid, but will set up anywhere there is rice husk and a demand for electricity. To date, they have 35 power plants in operation; four of 52kW and the rest 32kW installed capacity. Once the 25 plants currently under installation are complete, HPS will have a total installed capacity of about 2MW.

Some more figures: HPS pays under one rupee per kilo for rice husk, and by loading 50kg per hour into one of their 32kW power plants, can produce enough power to sustain a load of 700 typical rural households at the same time. The model seems unstoppable: this year, Bihar will

produce 1.8 billion kilograms of rice husk. If you extend the model to all of India, as HPS plan to do, they say it is possible to generate 27GW of power from just the waste rice husk that is produced in the country. That’s one sixth of the total installed generating capacity of the nation.

Part of the beauty of the model is that it’s built on a resource that costs, as Ratnesh describes it, “not that much.” When the company first began buying rice husk for their pilot plant, local millers noticed the commodity had become valuable and started hoarding it, driving prices up accordingly. Ratnesh and Gyanesh responded by setting up their own rice mill, dehusking villagers’ rice for free. All the other rice mills went out of business. Ratnesh and Gyanesh signed a contract with them, guaranteeing that they could buy rice husks at an affordable price for the next six to eight years, and then shut down their free mill to direct the business back to the other mills. They have a similarly inclusive approach to the diesel merchants, as many of the villages they’ve set up in have private micro-grids already in place, distributing electricity generated by enterprising individuals from burning diesel. “First we offer them work at our plant. If they choose not to work with us, there’s enough business that we can both set up there. We don’t want to completely take over somebody else’s business.” Ratnesh laughs a little. “We do take some share of their market, though.”

Climate change and pollution doesn’t really feature on the radar of the rural poor, but diesel fuel presents other problems due to its expense.  Incomparison, the HPS electricity is an excellent deal for a customer. Anush Kumar, 25, runs a hostel for schoolboys in Sariswa, a village in West Champaran District in the west of the state. He previously paid 1700 rupees per month for a diesel generator to light the hostel for three hours every evening, but now pays 1200 rupees a month to HPS for a power supply for seven hours from their nearby plant. The students can study later, and a saving of 500 rupees can really make a difference when you have 125 boys to take care of. “I’d be happy to pay for full, 24-hour access,” he says. “We have a grid connection but it only gives us power for one or two days a month. It’s useless.” Scant power supply is a common bane for the rural population of India, who too often lose out to the cities in the scrabble for electricity from the large power plants.

Photo: Harikrishna Katragadda/Greenpeace

Madi Devi, 50, sits in the marketplace down the street with a two-year-old child asleep in her lap. The 32kW Sariswa plant is already operating at full capacity, and so Madi has not been able to take a connection. She’d like to, and says she would pay for it. The HPS connection would be cheaper than the kerosene she buys at the moment, and her household could save 150 rupees per month. What would they spend it on? “Food,” she says simply. The family of seven have a monthly income of 1500 rupees.

The dim tarry light from Madi’s kerosene lamp is one of three grades of light in Sariswa village at night time. Those doorways with a connection are pooled in the white light of a CFL bulb, and above each connected household hang a bunch of low wattage yellow bulbs like balloons. These filament bulbs are HPS’s field method of monitoring current: a customer can have as much electricity as they want and would want to pay for, but there has been a problem with people stealing by using more than agreed. The filament bulbs work as fuses because they burn out when too much current is drawn. Ratnesh blames the theft on the rural Bihari’s “inertia to change”, and a sense of entitlement borne of an intractable caste system. He tells us about a story of one village, where an HPS electrician fitting a fuse outside an upper-caste man’s house had a gun held to his head by the furious customer, who felt his caste gave him the right to free electricity. When the electrician did not demur, the man “broke his head” with a stick. A police complaint went nowhere. “This man would spend 50,000 rupees fighting the case, but he wouldn’t pay 50 rupees a month because he had to show his supremacy in the village,” explains Ratnesh. In the face of such brutality, HPS shut the plant and 500 villagers lost their electricity connection. “The whole village suffered, but no one came forward to say anything.” Ratnesh shakes his head.

The stubborn caste system is something that HPS is striving to challenge through their power as an employer as well as a supplier. On one of the days we visit, Ratnesh has driven the eight hours from Patna to play a game of football with the HPS employees of West Champaran District. The managers play next to the husk-loaders in the pouring rain, distinguished only by their shirt or lack of it to demark the two teams. HPS insists that all employees refer to each other respectfully, with the ji suffix that balances respect and affection in India to every name, but creating a sense of equality is a slow process.

“Sir! Sir! Shall I kick the goal now, sir!” shouts one employee to his managers, pausing in front of the makeshift goalposts. “Just kick it!” They shout back.

The exemplary HPS model has won accolades, both social and financial. Yet if they hadn’t won their first monetary awards in the US, accessing start-up finance could have posed a problem, and banks do not consider such projects in Bihar a worthwhile investment: too much corruption, too many problems. Instead, HPS now has thousands of paying customers in both domestic (80-90%) and commercial sectors across Bihar, and have just built their first plant in Uttar Pradesh, a neighbouring state. There are plans to expand to states in the south (Tamil Nadu), east (West Bengal) and north-east (Assam), as well as across the border to Nepal. “Anywhere there is rice husk, it can work,” says Ratnesh. They’ve now discovered that silicon can be extracted from the rice husk char, and plan to start selling this to solar panel manufacturers, creating in-house

employment for rural women in Bihar in the process. They’re also seriously contemplating registering HPS’s power plants under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) , which would bring them an extra income of around 100,000 rupees per plant per annum, based on the calculation that an electricity connection will save a villager from burning ten litres of kerosene per month.

They have no interest in patenting their model. The secret lies not in the biomass gasification system, which is “so simple that even a person who cannot read and write can operate it with a little bit of training,” sniffs Ratnesh, but in their social blueprint. Most of the managerial staff trained at India’s best business schools, and have left jobs with higher salaries both at home and abroad to work long hours in villages with no connectivity and no toilets. “But they work very well,” says Ratnesh, “because they also want to make a difference.” Some other employees previously led lives of drugs or crime, and now work for HPS on the straight and narrow. The unifying factor is “passion. If you don’t have that, you can’t work with us.”

One suspects there must be some negative externalities to the model. Every method of power generation has them. “To be honest,” Ratnesh says, “of this plant, I haven’t seen any. We have analysed noise level pollution, quality of gas, the effect the plant is having on the surrounding area…” In fact, there have been many positive effects witnessed in the villages where HPS has set up plants. Villagers say that burglaries have reduced because of better lighting at night, and the number of snakebites in each village suddenly dropped to zero when the electricity came. Quality of life for women improves as they can at least see the insects that swarm as they’re cooking, and shopkeepers make more money, as they can stay open for more hours. Electricity to power one 30W CFL bulb costs 80 rupees a month, and most plants operate for six to seven hours every evening. “They wouldn’t have got a better deal than this in their whole life,” says Ratnesh. Initially customers were paying after using the electricity, but there were problems with some people refusing to pay. Payments are now collected in advance by an HPS employee.

On the final day we meet, he shares some news. It’s a small piece of news, but it holds a wonderful potential. Five residents from the village where the upper caste man beat an electrician, and HPS had to shut their plant, came to see Ratnesh in the morning. They told him they wanted electricity, and were prepared to put in the work to start up a plant themselves. HPS decided that these five villagers will be their first production franchisees.

When Ratnesh and Gyanesh were children, they used to chant a sanskrit prayer in the mornings at school. Aum, the children said.

Rice husk powerOptimal design of system using biomass can increase rice mill profitabilityWorld-Grain.com, Dec. 19, 2012by Susan Reidy

Rice milling companies spend more than half of their operating costs on thermal energy used for drying and electricity.

Reducing those costs and increasing profitability is possible with an optimal rice mill utility system that efficiently uses rice husks as the main byproduct of rice milling and as an important source of renewable energy, according to a paper written by Lim Jeng Shiun, Haslenda Hashim, Zainuddin Abdul Manan and Sharifah Rafidah Wan Alwi in the Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research journal.

The paper presented a mathematical approach to determine the optimal logistic network for the rice husk supply; the economic scale of the rice husk cogeneration system; and an optimal utility supply network for a series of dryers consisting of a combination of cyclonic husk furnace (CHF) and co-generation systems.

Using the formula, the authors determined that an optimal configuration includes a specified rice husk logistic network, a 15-tonne boiler for the co-generation system and eight units of CHFs to satisfy the rice mill heat and power requirements.

Such a network will reduce 18.5% of the total rice mill annualized cost, which includes capital, fuel and electricity.

Husk power

Rice husk can be used for power generation, for a cogeneration system and in paddy drying. For drying purposes, the paddy is typically burned in a cyclonic husk furnace to produce hot gas. About 20 kilograms of husk can generate 60,000 to 70,000 kcal of heat, enough to reduce the moisture content of one tonne of paddy from 20% to 14%.

Husks have been used as a fuel for co-generation systems, which must be designed with flexibility to supply electricity for rice milling operations throughout the year, and heat for dryers during harvesting seasons.

During peak drying periods, a co-generation system should provide extensive thermal heat to dry paddy within 72 hours of harvesting in order to preserve quality. At other times of the year, co-generation should be used for electricity generation.

To maximize the economic impact of co-generation and CHF systems, several factors must be considered, the authors noted, including:•Variation of heat and power demands during different periods of the year. A detailed assessment must be made to exploit the difference in heat and energy demands during the peak and off-peak drying periods.•Energy supply options. The efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the options are vital to consider for an optimal system.

•Rice husk supply limitation. The amount of rice husk from a mill is limited and may not be able to sustain the heat and power demands of energy intensive milling and drying. There is a need to transport and purchase rice husks from other mills. The limited supply, required transportation and purchasing costs are key factors to consider in the design of a rice mill utility system.

System optimization

The authors arrived at a mathematical approach for optimal planning of a rice husk logistic network and design of a rice mill utility system. The system uses rice husk from various locations to meet the electricity and drying requirements of the rice mill at different times of the year.

They formulated an integrated superstructure that includes all logistics and utility system configurations; transformed the superstructure as a mixed integer linear programming problem; and developed an optimal solution methodology. The method was then tested on a rice mill in Malaysia.

The company planned to install a co-generation system within its centralized drying facility located in its rice mill. It will dry about 100,000 tonnes of paddy per year. A combined CHF and co-generation will be designed to meet the heating requirements of the drying facility and also to generate power. The system is expected to provide cost savings for the company.

The moisture content of the paddy from a country like Malaysia can reach up to 25%, so 4,000 tonnes of rice husks are required to dry 100,000 tonnes of paddy. More rice husks will need to be purchased and transported from other mills.

In a typical rice mill facility that uses rice husk as a fuel, the CHF supplies heat to a dryer system, which may include a combination of fluidized bed dryers (FBD) and inclined bed dryers (IBD). Electricity is supplied by the national grid.

Rice husk is transported from internal and external rice mills. The distance between rice husk supply locations and the co-generation facility affects transportation costs.

Steam is generated when rice husks are burnt as fuel in the boiler. The amount of steam produced depends on the amount of rice husk burnt, its calorific value, the boiler efficiency and the enthalpy change across the boiler. If the electricity produced by the co-generation system can’t meet demand, additional electricity can be purchased from the national grid.

Boiler capacity governs how much steam is generated on an hourly basis. To ensure boiler operability, it must operate above the boiler turndown ratio, which is typically 50% of the boiler maximum capacity.

Case study

The company’s potential rice husk supply network includes 10 internal rice mills and six external rice mills. The husk is transferred from the rice mills to the drying facility. Heat and power comes from a co-generation system for heat and electricity, and CHF for heat for the process dryers.

There are two six-month paddy growing seasons per year. Paddy must be dried to the specified moisture content within 72 hours after harvest. The rice mill peak drying period of 30 days coincides with the harvesting period. No drying is done during the off-peak period since no paddy is being harvested.

During the peak period, the optimal rice husk supply mix is selected from one internal rice mill and three external rice mills, the authors found. But during the off-peak drying period, rice husk came from three internal and two external rice mills. The rice mills are selected as they are able to fulfill the demand at a

minimum cost. The optimal utility system includes a 15-tph boiler for the co-generation system and six units of CHFs. The CHFs supply heat to all the FBDs and 16 units of the IBDs. The co-generation system also supplies heat to the remaining IBDs.

When the cost of transportation increases 80% as compared to the baseline value, a co-generation system is no longer favorable, the paper reported. At this point, all heat will be supplied by CHF and electricity will be outsourced.

If the transportation cost increases 60%, the logistic network configuration can remain the same since the boiler size remains unchanged. The overall utility system cost is still lower in comparison to the baseline, because electricity savings derived from co-generation have outweighed the increase in total rice husk cost.

As the electricity tariff increases from the baseline value, the boiler size and the amount of electricity generated also is increased. To minimize the impact of the tariff, co-generation is a favorable option to fulfill heat and power demands. Therefore, more heat loads of IBDs are supplied by the co-generation system.

Unlike CHF, which uses rice husk energy as thermal energy, co-generation uses rice husk energy in thermal and electrical energy. As a result, co-generation tends to consume more rice husk than CHF to supply the same amount of thermal energy. During the off-peak drying period, more rice husks will be required as fuel for the co-generation system to produce electricity.

In a baseline case, eight CHF units are needed. With the use of co-generation, only six units of CHF are needed as the remaining heat is supplemented by the 15-tph co-generation system.

As the drying load increases to 25%, the heat supplied by the co-generation system remains the same, with the extra drying load being supplied by CHF. As the drying load increases from 75% to 100%, the heat and power supplied by the co-generation system are also increased, the authors said.

Designing an optimal rice mill utility system using rice husk biomass is a complex problem that involves trade-offs between various capital and operating costs, the authors said. By combining economics and process data, optimization offers a comprehensive solution to address the complex problem.

A technology that converts rice husk into electricity is gaining ground in Bihar. Some 100,000 households in the state already use electricity produced from biomass and their number is steadily growing.According to an estimate, 44 percent of India's population still live without electricity, making this biomass-based power generation technology indispensable in energy-starved states like Bihar.Though this technology has been in use for the past 50 years in India, Husk Power Systems (HPS), a rural electrification company, has modified it to create a cost-effective operational model.Today, HPS supplies power to 50 off-grid villages in the state. Each village has a population between 2,000 and 4,000. By 2012, HPS plans to cover 2,000 villages in the state.Rice husk is traditionally discarded in India. However, when it is heated, it releases a gas that HPS uses to run modified diesel engines to generate electricity."We heat rice husk to a point at which they turn into gas and that gas runs an engine," said Chip Ransler, chief strategy officer of HPS. The power is supplied through a grid that HPS operates.The rice husk is procured from farmers and mill owners, and each biomass gasification plant is run by trained mechanics."Roughly 1.5 kg of rice husk yields 1 KWh (kilowatt-hour) of electricity," Ransler told IANS."Electricity is generated via an alternator and delivered in three phases at 220 volts. We set up grids that are specially suited according to the size of the villages. The setup is completely decentralised," he added.The villages that have benefited include Tamkuha, Dhanaha, Rupahi, Madhubani, Inarawa, Sarisawa and Majhoulia. All are located in West Champaran district.However, the company wants to keep its electricity rates confidential."We don't share the price. But villagers save 50 percent of what they were spending on kerosene and diesel, and they're getting much larger output from the investments in HPS," Ransler said.Simon Desjardins, an analyst with Shell Foundation, a Britain-based NGO that provides financial and technical aid to HPS, said electricity shortages can directly impede the economic development of a village, apart from the environmental pollution caused by the use of diesel and kerosene."Today, Bihar represents a viable market for modern energy services. The rural communities are willing to pay for reliable electricity," he said.Ransler said HPS initially provided electricity to 15 villages with support from the Shell Foundation. Now it has 10 biomass plants with capacity ranging from 35-100 KW. It has also created jobs opportunities for the locals.Biomass gasification plants are eco-friendly as they replace diesel and kerosene with carbon-neutral biomass-derived electricity.Ransler said each HPS plant offsets roughly 80-100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.