\n\n\n
<\/a>\nIn one of the poorest countries on earth, a renewable energy\ncompany, Grameen Shakti, is busy installing nearly 1,000 solar home\nsystems each day. It turns out all that small-scale solar has\nachieved something quite big.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn November, Grameen Shakti hit one million Solar Home Systems\ninstalled. The company’s milestone reinforces a lesson that is\nincreasingly clear: Whether it’s Germany, the U.S., or even China,\ndistributed solar installations are driving the solar revolution.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nHow is this possible?\n<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\nToday we are talking about 1 million solar home systems in Bihar.\nBut tomorrow we could easily be talking about tens of millions in\neither Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, Indian states that have off-grid\npopulations larger than most European nations.\n<\/p>\n
\nHow would either of these states be able to replicate such an\nawe-inspiring feat? Because they have the exact same ingredients for\nsuccess: a robust rural banking sector (Micro Finance through\nGrameen Shakti for Bangladesh, State Banks for India); a\ndemonstrated need (large numbers of un-electrified people); and\npolicy support (World Bank finance for Bangladesh and Chief\nMinisters whose political futures are increasingly reliant on clean\nenergy access in India).\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nOur rural south Georgia people mostly aren’t without electricity,\nbut many of them are paying far too much for it ($200, $300, or even $600\na month).\nWhat we don’t have is solar financing and political will.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe know what needs to be done.\nStop\n\nthe nuclear boondoggle.<\/a>\nGet the\n\n1973 Territorial Electric Act<\/a> out of the way.\nUse those funds to finance real distributed solar,\nalong with private capital freed up by liberalizing PPMs.\nThen we’ll see solar jobs here in south Georgia,\nand people won’t have to pay $300\/month for electricity.\n<\/p>\n
\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Georgia Power’s idea of “distributed” is 2 to 20 Megawatt solar farms doled out over several years. Bangladesh reminds us how distributed is really done. Justin Guay wrote for ThinkProgress 18 Dec 2012, Small Is Big: Bangladesh Installs One Million Solar Home Systems In one of the poorest countries on earth, a renewable energy company, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,14,8,18,21,23,24,53],"tags":[8736,1061,1037,8704,8701,8708,8702,12,7,8711,8713,8714,8725,6],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-sustainability","tag-activism","tag-bangladesh","tag-distributed","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-planning","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-sustainability","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}