Eco-activist group Greenpeace brought solar power to Dharnai, India, in 2014, constructing a green micro-grid it said would make the tiny village “energy independent” and a model for the rest of the country to follow.
Eight years later, reports indicate the solar micro-grid is not only defunct but is being used as a cattle shed. [bold, links added]
The Dharnai venture is only one of many failed attempts by environmental groups like Greenpeace to “green” the developing world, according to one of its co-founders.
“It’s the same thing that’s happened a lot across Africa: a goody two shoes comes in and builds them a small solar facility,” CO2 Coalition Director Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace in the 1970s, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Then, pretty soon the battery wears out and it just doesn’t get repaired and they don’t know what to do because they don’t have any expertise,” said Moore, who departed Greenpeace in the 1980s after he said the group lost touch with its original purpose. “There’s plenty of those stories.”
In July 2014, Greenpeace celebrated the project, claiming that it made Dharnai the first village in the state of Bihar to run entirely on solar energy.
The project quickly collapsed, though, as batteries became overused, causing the entire grid to fall into disrepair, environment-focused news outlet Mongabay-India reported in December.
Today, paddy straw is piled up around the project, which is now being used to shelter cattle, according to Mongabay-India. In addition, solar panels are covered in dust, and rods supporting the green tech are heavily rusted.
“When this solar farm went defunct, it was primarily because of two reasons,” Vijay Jayaraj, an India-based researcher at the environmental group Cornwall Alliance, told TheDCNF. “One is the cost of the power, and the second is reliability.”
“In 2016 and 2017, when the village was finally connected to the grid — and the grid was powered by coal power plants — they understood that coal power is much more reliable,” he continued.
Jayaraj added that non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace often market renewable energy alternatives to remote villagers with little or no electricity in developing countries.
Such groups can avoid heavy scrutiny since the areas they approach are in dire need of power.
“These programs and solutions don’t talk about the sustainable nature of the programs, the longevity of the programs, what happens when the technologies age, or how much of the current demand it could meet,” he said.
“So, by pushing these questions under the carpet, these programs have started to take root in a lot of developing countries. India is no exception.”
While some villagers expressed optimism about the Dharnai, India, solar facility in 2014, others protested it saying they didn’t want “fake” electricity, according to Mongabay-India.
At the time, Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, applauded the project and told locals that coal power would diminish over time while solar power would always be around.
“In the first three years, it worked well and people were using it. But after three years the batteries were exhausted and it was never repaired,” Ravi Kumar, a local shopkeeper, told Mongabay-India.
“So now, while the solar rooftops, CCTV cameras, and other infrastructure are intact, the whole system has become a showpiece for us.”
“No one uses solar power anymore here,” he continued. “The glory of Dharnai has ended.”
The number of solar connections in Dharnai and surrounding neighborhoods with access to the solar grid fell from 255 in 2014 to 120 in 2016, a Nalanda University study published in 2020 concluded.
The study blamed high prices associated with solar power and the grid’s unreliability — villagers were warned not to use high-power appliances like televisions and refrigerators — on the decreasing connections.
“We left solar connection after using it for one year. How can poor people like us pay such amounts of money?” an anonymous local told Nalanda University. “They used to give electricity only for two hours. During rain, they do not use to give electric supply and … during the fog in the winter.”
Dharnai was eventually connected to the region’s coal-powered grid in 2016, giving villagers access to a much cheaper and more reliable power source, Mongabay-India reported.
Coal power also allowed them to use high-power appliances.
Greenpeace stopped posting about the Dharnai solar farm on social media and in blog posts back in 2015. The group didn’t respond to requests for comment from TheDCNF.
Read rest at Daily Caller
Who would have guessed that a solar powered system would fail before too long? Or that the batteries would lose their ability to hold a charge? I mean, who hasn’t had to replace their batteries on their battery-powered drills, etc? Just because they are bigger doesn’t mean the physics in how they work changes.
Too bad Greenpeace Idiots but it looks like your Solar Village is a bust and this is so funny to see Greenpeace being humilated like this for all their years of breaking the law and getting the coverage from the usial useful idiots from Hollywood or where else how Greenpeace please just Go Away
Even when it was running as they said it should the villagers said it was too expensive and they had to curtail use of larger appliances.
No wonder Demonrats want us to use solar energy. It’s great in the North east USA where it is usually cloudy and snowy for months… snow covered solar panels don’t do much good!
all the climate activists crow about is the miraculous battery banks that will enable 24 hour usage of solar PV, but they hide the fact that even the most state of the art battery chemistry will still reach end of life after just a few years of continuous use.
those pitiable villagers had no knowledge of this as the Greenpeace/CEED deceivers wouldn’t tell them the entire truth, just trumpeted their victory and moved to the next region to repeat their deception.