Local News - How India's 'smart villages' are centralising solar power

City-dwellers tend to take electricity for granted, says Ashok Das, but for the roughly 200 million Indians living off-grid, access to power is a privilege, not a right.
Mr Das says that makes them a fertile ground for experimenting with smarter ways of using energy that could help the rural poor leapfrog traditional power networks to a greener, community-led approach.

"Changing consumer behaviour in a big city is a major problem," he says. "It will take decades to build smart cities, but I can get thousands of smart villages done in that time."
After a decade in the US semiconductor industry, Mr Das returned to India in 2005 where he transitioned into a green tech consultant.

But despite the huge sums directed into renewables, he saw very little focus on energy access for rural communities who could benefit most. more...