Recognizing the importance of rural electricity in the country’s development goals, the Government of India (GOI) has set ambitious targets for 100 percent village electrification by 2007 and 100 percent household electrification by 2012. To achieve this objective, the GOI launched the Accelerated Rural Electrification Program (AREP) to electrify more than 100,000 villages by 2007 and more than 10 million households by 2012, with a special focus on six priority states out of 12 targeted for the National Program for rural electrification.

For the purpose of identifying state projects for support under the Bank project, the Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and the World Bank selected Winrock International India (WII) to develop the framework for identifying sub-projects suitable for funding under AREP, with particular focus on sub-projects in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The various tasks involved in the project were:

• Desk review of proposals forwarded by state utilities to narrow areas of interest for various kinds of pilot sub-projects.
• Discussion with government officials, relevant SEB staff, private sector, etc, to select sub-projects for further investigation. The sub-projects covered a variety of sizes/technologies/modalities to cover both grid and off-grid solutions viz: a) setting up of Distributed Generation and Supply Systems which will include decentralized generation and use of non conventional /renewable/hybrid sources of energy b) Setting up of Distribution and Supply system through the normal conventional source of energy and grid-connected system
• Developing a framework that can be used to screen/rank various proposals lying with the GOI (REC)
• Short-listing/identifying ten pilot projects (in the states of UP & Rajasthan) based on the framework, where sustainable and replicable models of non-utility based rural electrification initiatives could be implemented.

A report on these above tasks has been submitted to The World Bank.