Loktak Lake is a large freshwater lake in northeast India that is famous for its Phumdis floating islands. Loktak Lake is located in Moirang town in Bishnupur district of Manipur, where fishing communities survive on floating huts.
SNL Energy Solutions, a member at CLEAN (a consortium of DRE network), is powering better livelihoods for villagers in the Moirang district of Manipur. With its intervention in the area, it has also enabled education for children and brought new opportunities for income generation among the people.
Fishing in the lake is the only source of income for villagers in Moirang. Due to unreliable electricity supply and lack of grid connectivity in huts, they are unable to dry their fish produce at night as well as meeting basic lighting needs such as enabling children to study. The use of kerosene lanterns and candles are common in the community, but they are unsafe for grass-roofed huts that can catch fire easily.
Moirang residents came up with the idea of the tourist homestay concept, since Loktak Lake has its own charm by its beauty that attracts many tourists from across the country and abroad. However, the lack of an energy source was a major deterrent. The Moirang community also received complaints from tourists about improper lighting.
Since that part of the Loktak Lake comes under the Keibul Lamjao National Park local authorities do not allow diesel engines to be operated. Even though some of them buy solar panels and batteries from the market, they do not use a proper charge controller, as a result, the batteries get discharged quickly. Lake pollution and insufficient source of light and energy were affecting the people’s livelihood.
In this situation, SNL Energy Solutions was invited to be a part of an initiative named “Ensuring energy security for communities living in remote areas in Manipur” launched by CML Tata Trusts in March 2018. The main objective was to provide decentralized solar energy solutions to underserved rural communities suffering from unreliable electricity access.
Lighting up the huts through a clean source of energy such as solar power is a component of this initiative from CML Tata Trusts who were the funding partners. SEVA MANIPUR provides end-user financing and SNL Energy is the technical partner for identifying and installing solar PV systems. SELCO Foundation is the design partner for this initiative.
In 2019, SNL Energy Solutions contacted one of the hut owners and discussed a customized solar home system that can be installed properly with MMS and without exposed wiring. They installed three 40W solar PV system with 2.5W LED bulbs. SNL has been able to reach out to 500+ rural households. These solar home systems were economically effective for the community. On an average the monthly EMI is between INR 600 and INR 1000-/ for the tenure of 3 years. SNL provides 3 years of free service after that an annual maintenance contract can be signed for INR650.
Today, SNL Energy Solutions also offers livelihood solutions like blacksmith blowers, sewing machines etc. Due to this intervention, Moirang villagers with an existing grid connection saw a reduction of 40% in their bills. New solar system users are now able to work at night and can save on fuel and labour hiring charges upon using livelihood products like sewing machines, blacksmith blowers, water pumps etc. There is now no dependency on kerosene and candles and children can safely study at night. Further, the tourists, who earlier complained about lighting happily flock to the huts now, thus increasing the local population’s income.
