Ditching the traditional and expensive non-renewable energy sources, Diu has become the only Union Territory in India to completely run on solar power generated energy. Diu has capacitated to produce ample solar power for its residing citizens in a short span of three years.

Diu, which is known to be the least populated territories in India, with an overall area of 42 square kilometres, solar power plants were installed on over more than 50 acres of its land. Diu is now capable to generate a total of about 13 megawatts of electricity daily from its solar power generating facilities.

Three years back, Diu completely relied on a power grid owned by Gujarat Government. This led huge line losses and expensive tariffs that had to be paid by the Daman&Diu. But as the local company began to generate and distribute electricity from the solar energy power plants, electricity losses were drastically reduced.

Milind Ingle, the electricity department executive engineer of Daman and Diu said, “Diu’s peak-time demand for electricity is not more than 7 megawatts and we are currently generating about 13 megawatts of electricity from solar energy per day. This is way more than the consumption demand”.

Due to this surplus electricity from the solar power plants, the monthly costs of local households have gone down by 12 percent, Ingle added. The residents as per the new rates would be obligated to pay Re 1.20 per unit for using between 0-50 units and Re 1.50 per unit for 50-100 units.

This is seen as a great measure that has surely given its contribution to the idea of sustainable development. This will surely be seen as an example by various States and Union Territories to push themselves towards generating cleaner energy. Plus finding new and innovative ways that would help to counter the power crisis that will be soon upon us tomorrow or day after tomorrow.