Lighting up lives
Around 16,000 households in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh have been lit up by the CEO of a tiny renewable power company called KAHO India, writes Aditi Phadnis
What do you know about Lithium Ion (LI-ion) batteries? Probably more than you think. LI-ion batteries are the ones that power re-chargeable applications like laptops and mobile phones. And if some variants of these are paired with solar power-driven photovoltaic cells, they can be a source of perpetual power for 10 to 15 years at a stretch, without needing to be replaced.
The CEO of a tiny renewable power company called KAHO India, Subhag Jain looks absurdly young. But he is, literally, responsible for lighting up the lives of around 16,000 households in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, hit by Left Wing Extremism (LWE).
The problem was simple: How do you reach electricity to an area hit by insurgency and always on the edge of darkness because one attack on a central power-generating plant could plunge it back into blackness?
When you can’t set up a power plant, electricity has to be generated via portable devices that provide users with a degree of autonomy of usage. After all, laptops are such wonderful devices because they don’t need to be connected to power for long periods. So what if a small battery could replace the massive, inconvenient generator and its second cousin, the inverter, to provide a steady source of power?
Jain began his career selling small kits — one bulb, powered by lead acid batteries manufactured in China - in his hometown, Baraut. He had just completed an MBA and was acutely conscious that there was need to bridge the electricity gap caused by repeated power cuts. He found customers extremely dissatisfied with the performance of the lead acid battery — once it went out of commission, it had to be replaced and the cost of the battery was 50 per cent of the cost of the kit.
His search led to the lithium ion battery and took him to Samsung after Panasonic (which also produces the same sort of batteries) gave him the cold shoulder. Jain did extensive R&D and used the li-ion battery to design home lighting solutions.
Till then, his company had firmly avoided the government. But in an extremely price sensitive market, people were not ready to spend ~15,000 on a product that they could get for ~5000. So he bid for one or two government tenders, and got them after he explained that specs should be changed because the li-ion option was a better long term investment than lead acid, though it was costlier. Solar panels have a 10 year life. A battery that is rechargeable and has a 10-year life can power solar photovoltaic cells more optimally.
Analysts say India is facing a perfect storm of factors that will drive solar photovoltaic adoption at a “furious pace over the next five years and beyond”. The falling prices of solar panels has coincided with the growing cost of grid power in India. So you need offgrid solutions. This is exactly what Jain offers.
When the Bastar opportunity came, everyone tried to talk him out of it. It was too dangerous, you will become a target, he was told. But Jain went on a site visit and fell in love with the verdure. The first household in Bastar used his device to switch on a light and a fan in December, 2016. To celebrate, Jain spent new year’s eve in Bastar.
Obviously this would not have been possible without Samsung. “The company has not only been making batteries for internal consumption of the systems it sets up but has also developed products such as refrigerators, TVs and high masts that can operate on Li-ion batteries,” says Jain. In some ways he created a new market for Samsung which had never thought of India as a market place. Samsung supplies batteries for Tesla and can now see how important India will be after the push for Electronic Vehicles (EV).
Jain is now hoping to cash in on the Indian Railways which wants to mount solar panels on coaches to leverage solar power. He has devised a flexible solar panel to eliminate the heavy, unwieldy mounts that the Railways in thinking of using. LI-ion batteries for fans that will drive away mosquitoes and malaria ? That’s an application no one could have thought about. But Jain has done it!