Paper presented at ICORE 2005, Pune, 20–22 January, 2005
Rural areas of India are characterised by very low per capita energy consumption and in most places commercial energy like electricity is not available. Thus, it is a matter of concern that even 57 years after independence around 60% of rural households still use kerosene for lighting. Besides, 180 million tons of biomass is used in rural areas for cooking through very inefficient and smoky stoves. Cooking and lighting energy constitute 75% of total energy used in rural areas [1].
