ISEP is happy to announce its partnership with Smart Power India, an organization established by The Rockefeller Foundation, on the Smart Power for Rural Development (SPRD) program. The two year project is an ambitious and comprehensive program on technology adoption, power demand, and willingness to pay for mini-grid power in rural India, combining analysis of pre-existing data, our own experience with mini-grid systems, an extensive original survey of current and potential sites, and rigorous randomized controlled trials. The research will culminate in a report that summarizes key lessons and offers a strategy for the future.

“India’s power sector is at a turning point”, says Prof Johannes Urpelainen, ISEP’s Founding Director and project lead for this study. “While renewable energy offers an unprecedented opportunity for decarbonization in India’s power sector, managing the clean energy transition requires dealing with social, economic, and institutional challenges. We, at ISEP, are delighted to offer cutting-edge social and behavioral science to analyse this transition in India.”