Solar Village Piloted at Mancherial

Adilabad: A solar village will come up as a pilot project in the Velganur village located on the bank of rivet Godavari in Dandepalli mandal in Mancherial district. This is part of a state government’s pilot project to develop three solar villages in the state at the pilot level. Mancherial MLA Kokkirala Premsagar Rao and district collector Kumar Deepak visited Velganur, which is 36 km from the Mancherial, and has 648 households, and inspected agriculture motor pump sets and interacted with the villagers on Monday.

Velaganur has a total of 772 agriculture motor pump sets, the highest in the Mancherial Assembly constituency though it is on the banks of River Godavari due to lack of irrigation facilities. On the other hand, efforts are being made to fetch Godavari water to Velganur village by lift irrigation.

The MLA told Deccan Chronicle that they would replace the electricity-based agriculture motors with solar-based ones. They would also set up solar panels in each household and a few selected places to supply solar power to households and street lights.

The MLA said three villages have been selected in the state under the solar villages pilot project including Velagnur and later the project will be extended to other assembly constituencies. With the pilot project, the state government wants to assess the costs of setting up a ‘solar village’ and check to what extent the central government solar subsidies would be useful in setting up a project.