There have been several Government initiatives to support clean energy, especially biomass, biogas and solar initiatives. Of equal importance is India’s strong tradition of implementing measures through villages based on local knowledge and experiences. The exchange of experiences between communities and cooperation between local authorities and private actors has played an important role in situations where breakthroughs have been made. There is an urgent need to apply multi-stakeholder based ‘learn and apply’ approaches to the decentralised renewable energy (DRE) sector.

To build this network, Development Alternatives (DA), in association with UNEP/GRID-Arendal has developed a knowledge base on energy efficiency and decentralised renewable energy in India. The long-term vision is to help communities in scaling up renewable energy solutions that will enhance access to energy and create sustainable livelihoods in large numbers. The overall purpose of the programme is to create a learning platform for the implementation of projects in the decentralised renewable energy arena that capitalises upon local skills and resources, with women in key operational roles. This knowledge base consists of a ‘Decision Support System (DSS)’ for DRE, ‘Compendium of Case Studies’ and other resources on decentralised renewable energy in India.

In generic terms, Decision Support System (DSS) is a tool that facilitates the process of decision making by breaking down a complex problem into simple components. The DSS, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based tool, will provide need-based information on technical, social, financial and environmental aspects of DRE technology options to help decision makers in taking informed decisions. The DSS is web hosted for the benefit of the larger community and it is envisaged to help communities in other developing countries to take appropriate decisions regarding RE projects.

The social component is evaluated through the ‘Social Assessment’ sheet. It helps the decision makers assess community readiness to set up the DRE plant and, accordingly, suggests different delivery models on DRE plants, namely ‘Village level’ and ‘Group level’ DRE initiatives.

The technical component is evaluated through the ‘Resource Assessment’ and ‘Demand Estimation’ sheets. Resource assessment considers mainly two types of resources, i.e., crop residue and wood collected by villagers and helps in supply side assessment. Demand Estimation helps us assess the current and future load demands of the villagers. Thus, the technical component provides technical details, primarily the capacity of the DRE plant to be installed.

The financial component is inbuilt in the ‘Resource Assessment’ and ‘Demand Estimation’ sheets and it gives an estimate of the total installation cost of the DRE plant, the costs to be incurred after plant commissioning for five years (includes operation and maintenance costs, personnel costs, equipment and infrastructure costs and raw material costs) and a fund gap analysis.

The present version of DSS is a prototype, i.e., it has been designed for taking decisions only related to one technology (biomass-based DRE solutions). It is well suited for DRE plants in semi arid regions of India and small-scale DRE plants, i.e., plants with a scale upto 1 MW as the assumptions have been taken for the same.

This is the first version and acts as a prototype of the DSS tool. It will be developed further to include more parameters in order to make it more viable. q