Mini-Generators To Create Electric Power For Indian Villages With Rice Husks

Charlottesville, VA (AHN) - Two students from the University of Virginia have set up a business to provide cheap and clean electricity to millions of poor villages in India using rice husk-fueled generators.

The award-winning Husk Power Systems (HPS) of Charles "Chip" Ransler and Manoj Sinha from UVA's Darden School of Business also aims to provide poor Indian families a source of income by selling the waste ash byproduct of the mini-generators as cement additive.

Under Ransler and Sinha's business plan, HPS will put up small rice husk generators in 350 million rural Indian villages without electricity. Users will pay for electricity consumption so the village will have money to operate and maintain the generators.

HPS is pilot testing rice husk power plants in two rural communities in Bihar, India's poorest state. A generator can power from 200 to 500 households at the same time.

Sinha, who also has an engineering degree from the University of Massachusetts, and fellow countryman Gyanesh Pandey of Husk Power conceived the rice husk generator while in college in India. Hailing from poor villages without electricity, the two had vowed to raise money to donate rice husk generators to poor villages in their country.

Sinha shared the idea and teamed up with Ransler, who conducted a study and found that up to 350 million rural villages in India that are rich in ricefields lack electricity.