MIT team studies solar energy impact in UP village

Solar power can help resolve the electricity crisis in areas that have abundant sunlight, such as Uttar Pradesh, feel experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On Saturday, an MIT team visited Lucknow and a village in Barabanki to study, along with representatives from researchbased firm Morsel Research and Development, the impact of solar micro-grids that are acting as primary sources of electricity there.

The primary objective of the research is to develop software that facilitates decision-making pertaining to electricity distribution, taking into account several factors.

The research on assessing the use of solar energy in Indian villages is an extension of a larger study.

Associate professor of political science, Johanness Uprelainen from Columbia University, is running a randomised control trial in the villages of Barabanki and Unnao, under which trial habitations receive electricity through the solar micro-grid.

Identifying the usage, pattern and impact of alternative energy sources upon the lives of some of the poorest people could be a breakthrough, as over 1.4 billion people across the world do not have access to electricity.

Later, during a press conference, MIT professor José Ignacio Pérez Arriaga and research fellows Yael Borofsky and Doug Ellman said solar power should be used more to generate electricity and that people needed to develop a consciousness about what type of electronic item they are using and how much power it consumes.