Energy use in the rural areas of India: setting up a rural energy data base

Energy use in the rural areas of India: setting up a rural energy data base

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Chandra Shekhar Sinha^*, Shirish Sinha^* and Veena Joshi^a

^a Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Chandragupta Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110 021, India

^* Tata Energy Research Institute, Habitat Place, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110 003, India

Received 9 January 1996;

revised 19 November 1997;

accepted 3 December 1997.

Available online 6 August 1998.

Abstract

Aggregating and forecasting demand are crucial parts of energy planning. While a large number of energy consumption surveys have been conducted in the past in the rural energy sector of India, the lack of sufficient data and its compilation, coupled with doubt about the quality of data, has made the task extremely difficult. This paper summarizes our recent effort to compile, computerize and analyze data from 638 village energy consumption surveys covering over 39,000 households, carried out by different organisations between 1985 and 1989. The details of the level of information provided in the survey reports, area of survey, land use pattern, asset ownership, etc., of the collated studies are presented. Results based on the analysis of the energy consumption data compiled are then discussed. The national average for rural domestic thermal energy consumption (excluding water and space heating) estimated through this work (629 kcal or 2.63 MJ per capita daily) is much similar to the rural domestic thermal energy requirement assumed in most energy planning exercises in India in the past. The useful thermal energy consumption varies from 325 to 1065 kcal/cap/d (1.36–4.46 MJ/cap/d) in the East Coast Plain and Hills and the Eastern Himalayan Regions, respectively. Reconfirming the predominance of firewood, the data reveals that the contribution of firewood to the domestic thermal energy consumption has remained at about 58% over the last three decades; dungcake and agricultural residues contribute almost equally in the remaining share. At the national level, our estimates indicate that at least 180 million tonnes of firewood, 40 million tonnes of dungcakes and 30 million tonnes of agricultural residues were consumed in the rural sector for meeting the domestic thermal energy requirement in 1991. The paper also compares the estimates with those based on other surveys in India.

Keywords: Domestic energy consumption; rural energy database; rural energy planning; biofuel estimation; agro-climatic zone; India

Article Outline

1.

Introduction

2.

Coverage and scope of surveys

2.1. General features of villages

2.2. Land related details

2.3. Asset ownership

3.

Price of fuels

4.

Domestic energy consumption in the surveyed villages

4.1. Energy use for cooking

4.2. Energy use for lighting

4.3. Variation in fuel consumption between agro-climatic regions

5.

Correlations of energy use with demographic data

6.

National and state-level aggregates of biofuel use

6.1. Method of estimating demand based on consumption surveys

7.

Conclusion

7.1. Recommendations

Acknowledgements

References