Cairn India Brings The Gift Of Light For Barmer Village

Meghwalon ki Dhani is a village situated at the border of Barmer district in middle of the Thar Desert, Rajasthan. The village with a population of around 600 had no access to electricity. Children used to study in light of lantern and women had to cook food in dark or dim light. Households paid a high price for kerosene. All this changed as the village got an unexpected gift on this New Year – the gift of light- when Cairn India presented the villagers a 27 KW solar mini-grid project. With this, for the first time, the village found itself connected to a solar-powered grid. The villagers are elated, many having seeing electricity for the first time. On the first day, all villagers gathered together to watch TV, something they could not have imagined till a few days back. A micro-griduses central energy production and storage using transportation and distribution lines to connect each household  to the central system. The benefit of a “pooled” resource like this is the ability to supply higher peak demand power to households. For this project, Cairn India provided the capital while its partner for this initiative, Sun Edison, took take of the technical part. 10 local electricians trained at the Cairn Enterprise Centre in Barmer, did the wiring across the village. The entire task was completed in a record period of 90 days with active support of villagers.