Schneider Electric India Foundation (SEIF), a socially committed arm of Schneider Electric in India, has inaugurated two Climate Smart Villages in the Gumla district of Jharkhand where communities would be using solar power for irrigation, agro-processing, households, and requirements.
The Climate Smart Village initiative is designed to empower rural India, with a specific emphasis on uplifting tribal farming communities with the use of renewable energy. Schneider Electric launched this initiative in collaboration with PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Developed Action), an NGO that works to improve lives of underprivileged rural families.
Access to essentials like healthcare, education, food security, livelihood opportunities, safety, and clean water is crucial for socio-economic development. Energy is pivotal in enabling access to these necessities. In rural areas that lack reliable electricity access, many rely on polluting diesel power.
Recognizing these challenges, Schneider Electric has developed a Climate Smart Village Solution, which it claims to be innovative, efficient, reliable, and cost-effective. Schneider Electric through PRADAN implemented the solution in two villages in the Gumla District of Jharkhand to power productive loads such as irrigation pumps, oil expeller, rice huller, groundnut sheller, flour/spice grinding mill, and electric rickshaws. This system also supplies reliable power to households, runs streetlights, and meets other community needs ensuring 100% capacity utilization by efficiently directing power to various loads.
The Climate Smart Village Solution in Sehal and Chatti villages features 40 kW and 45 kW solar arrays with innovative IoT-enabled smart power management systems. This system ensures 100% capacity utilization of the solar panels by diverting power to different loads based on demand, benefitting the 110 families in the two villages. These enhancements have also led to new economic opportunities, such as a twofold increase in farmers’ income, reduced migration, and a decrease in carbon emissions by 60,000 kg/year.
As part of their livelihood improvement program in 2019, Schneider Electric and PRADAN have already installed 800+ solar irrigation pumps impacting the lives of 16,000+ women farmers.
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