Solar power will soon light up five villages dominated by tribal people in the backward H.D. Kote taluk of Mysuru district. The Mysuru Zilla Panchayat is all set to launch ‘Soura Belaku’, an initiative to install solar-powered street lights with centralised power delivery systems.
Four districts identifiedMysuru is one of the four districts (Haveri, Bagalkot and Ballari) identified by the State government for the ambitious project of harnessing solar energy to illuminate streets in rural areas.
As gram panchayats lack adequate revenue to pay electricity bills, which often results in disconnection, the government resolved to address the problem by taking the ‘solar’ route. It was decided to have centralised solar power plants as there were problems pertaining to standalone solar streetlights such as theft of batteries. Under the initiative, which will be taken up on a pilot basis, around 300 solar-powered streetlights would be installed in the five villages coming under B Matkere Gram Panchayat. Each village would have centralised devices to harness solar energy and the station would, in turn, deliver harnessed power to the networked streetlights, ZP engineers involved in the project told The Hindu .
An estimated 20 kV solar power would be generated in the five villages.
ZP Chief Executive Officer P.A. Gopal told The Hindu that tenders had been invited to execute the work under the Soura Belaku initiative.
Gandhinagar modelFollowing the success of a similar project taken up by the ZP at Gandhinagar in H.D. Kote taluk where 50 solar-powered streetlights were installed (receiving power from a centralised plant), the ZP proposed replicating the model to the State government.
Tribal hadis in focusMeanwhile, ZP president Pushpalatha Amarnath expressed a desire to light up at least 200 tribal settlements in the district with solar power, especially in the tribal-dominated H.D. Kote and Hunsur taluks.
