The power ministry has estimated that the Centre’s rural electrification plans, when completed, would increase demand for power by slightly over 7,335 mw. These estimates of added power demands is on account of the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) that aims at providing connections to an estimated 2.59 crore below poverty line households and 1.94 crore above poverty line households. Under the revised RGGVY cleared by the union cabinet earlier this year, the states have to supply a minimum of 6-8 hours of electricity to villages that implement this scheme.

It is based on this mandatory supply of power and factoring in electricity connections of 50 watt to BPL households and electricity connections of 500 watts to APL families, the ministry of power has worked out this would place a demand of close to 7,300 mw. To put matters in perspective, this is like setting up two new ultra mega power projects where each plant has a capacity of 4,000 mw. While this calculation on rural electrification is based on “diversity factor” of 1.5 — which indicates the quantum of such connections that would be online at any given time — the government is still facing some bottlenecks in speeding up the scheme. For instance, one of the issues is that the BPL lists have not yet been prepared by the state utilities for connections to be given. Adding to this, the power ministry has pointed out that there are delays in obtaining panchayat certificates for village electrification under the revised definition of village electrification.

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