-The Hindu From generating 1.3 Giga Watt energy at the time of Independence, the country’s energy generation has increased to 205 Giga Watt (an increase by close to 160 times). But India still faces 12 per cent electricity shortage. Therefore, all forms of energy must be used to overcome this, Director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), at Kalpakkam, S.C. Chetal told The Hindu . He was here on...

-The Telegraph Jamshedpur: Work is underway on turning former Maoist hotbed West Singhbhum’s Manoharpur block into a hub of model villages sponsored by Union rural development ministry, a separate project that will operate simultaneously with the much-hyped Saranda Action Plan (SAP). The ministry headed by Jairam Ramesh has asked the state forest department to study all the 56 villages of the block and chalk out an integrated development project under the banner...

-The Telegraph On a full-attendance day at a business process outsourcing centre in a village in Uttar Pradesh, 40 boys and girls work on computers, each of their desktops powered by rooftop solar panels that turn sunlight into electricity. Their workplace, a two-storey building, is the only structure in Sonari, a village of about 1,700 people and located about 50km from Lucknow on the road to Sitapur, where electricity is guaranteed nine...

-The Economic Times The April 28, 2012, issue of The Economist has a story on India's solar power and mentions Charanka village in Patan district, Gujarat. Solar energy can be converted into electricity, using photovoltaics, or can be converted into heat. (There are other technologies too, but those aren't important yet.) So far, solar thermal, or heating, in India has essentially meant solar cookers and water heaters, though it needn't stay that...

-IANS India's ambitious national solar programme has catalysed rapid growth in the solar market driving solar energy prices low and demonstrating how government policy can stimulate clean energy markets, according to a new report. In only two years, competitive bidding under India's National Solar Mission drove prices for grid-connected solar energy to nearly the price of electricity from fossil fuels, said the report released here Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defence...