A large portion of India’s population lacks access to reliable energy. For many, the solution to this will involve decentralised energy infrastructure in the form of renewable solar, or hybrid solar, diesel, battery, and biogas mini-grids.
The Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) together with the Smart Villages Initiative held a workshop focused on mini-grid energy generation, storage, and transmission technologies in India, and how they will be implemented. This was held at the IISc campus in Bangalore, on 21–22 July 2016. The workshop brought together academics, students, policymakers, business people, and NGO practitioners interested in sustainable energy and rural electrification.
The workshop aimed to look at the state of current research on the many aspects of mini-grid technologies, with a focus on control and storage technologies for mini-grids, which will have an effect on the future market (particularly the Indian market) in the next five to ten years. There was also a focus on how practitioners were implementing mini-grids on the ground in rural India. The first day of the workshop was a conference-style symposium with over 130 attendees. The second day was a more in-depth workshop-style discussion with 40 experts in attendance.
