He wants to dispel the darkness of rural Bihar

Many places in Bihar face 20-hour power cuts everyday. Nearly half of rural Bihar has not even been electrified. But if Gyanesh Pandey has his way, the entire state will light up in the next few years. He shares his plans with A Ganesh Nadar

I was born in Baitheniya, a small village in Bihar. My early education was in Bihar and then I went to a boarding school in Nainital. I studied in Delhi after that and became an engineer. I completed my masters degree in electrical, power and power electronics from the United States.

I worked in the semi-conductor industry in Los Angeles for six years. I came back to India in early 2007. Here, I started work in the field of rural electrification. We created a platform by which we could electrify rural villages using biomass as fuel. We have so far electrified 375 villages.

Ninety per cent of our customers have to pay less than what the government charges for power supply. Our plants do not talk about megawatts. We deal with 100 kilowatt plants.

We spend about nearly Rs 50 to 60 to set up a plant to produce one watt of power. The technology used is biomass gasification. We have innovated further to suit our needs but it is an old technology.

More than half of rural Bihar has no power supply. In 5 to 7 years, we will be able to electrify the rest of Bihar if we can raise the requisite funds. It costs nearly Rs 10 lakh to set up a power plant for a village with 250 houses.

We provide power to the villages for lighting, agriculture and small industry. We supply power at different times of the day.

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