BANGALORE: The day is not far when villages in five taluks of Tumkur district will get uninterrupted power supply from biomass gasifier plants.

Work on the country's first gasifier plant in Koratagere is in progress and five villages will get power in the next two months. A gasifier plant of 500 kV capacity will supply power to 500 households in the five villages surrounding Kabbigere of Koratagere cluster. The cost of power will be Rs. 3 per unit, which is cheaper than the power supplied by Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL).

A cluster-level electricity distribution society for Koratagere will take over the distribution franchise from the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM).

Sixty households have already become members of the society, Subhash C. Khuntia, Project Coordinator, Biomass Energy for Rural India Project, told The Hindu, on Monday.

Project cost

Work on the project has commenced at Madhugiri, Sira, Gubbi, and Tumkur taluks. Twenty-eight villages in these taluks will get power. The estimated cost of the project is Rs. 40 crores.

Of this, the State will receive Rs. 19 crores from the U.N. Global Environment Facility (GEF), Rs. 9 crores from India-Canada Environment Facility (ICEF), and the rest will be contributed by the beneficiaries. Only 59.9 per cent of the households in the area have electricity now.

Burning wood

The gasifier plants will generate power by burning wood in a controlled manner.

The youth of the village have been trained to run the plants.

In the last few months, officials have been able to motivate villagers in all the five clusters to go in for dependable energy services using locally available biomass as raw material.

Village bio-energy management committees are envisaged to operate and maintain the generation and supply of power, he said.

Village forest committees, set up according to the joint forest management guidelines of the Government, are engaged in biomass development both on common as well as private land, he said.

Scheme

During the last monsoon, 307.42 hectares belonging to 717 farmers was covered under the tree-based farming scheme. Farm forestry, involving planting of fuel wood species in woodlots, was taken up on fallow land and wasteland covering 29.03 hectares.

Mr. Khuntia said that a proposal for taking on lease 340 acres of vacant land belonging to the State Horticultural Farm in Koratagere taluk for raising biomass is under the consideration of the Government. A total of 684 hectares of forest and government lands was used last year.

Mr. Khuntia said the project will be a win-win situation for both the utility and the village community through reduction of transmission and distribution losses, supply of reliable, timely and quality power, and improved productivity. Whereas the utility will reduce its losses, the villagers can substantially improve their income level. Bill payment is also likely to get better, he said. Under the project efforts are being made to use locally available surplus biomass and to increase their availability through tree planting on vacant land. Now, 33 community biogas plants involving 119 households are functioning. This management model has so far saved 228 tonnes of fuel wood. "This fits in well with the concept of Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas, visualised by the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam," Mr. Khuntia said.

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