In July, India became famous for the largest power outage in history, affecting upwards of 620 million people – nearly 10 per cent of the world’s population. For the second largest nation in the world, power is not something to be taken for granted. Gyanesh Pandey, CEO of Husk Power Systems, probably could not have predicted the blackout of July 2012, but he did see power – specifically, sustainable, affordable electricity – as something that he could make accessible to those in rural parts of his native country.

In 2007, Pandey, whose background is in engineering and the semiconductor industry, teamed up with childhood friend and entrepreneur Ratnesh Yadav, with the aim of bringing electricity to rural India, beginning with their hometown of Bihar. “The genesis of this idea was providing access to electricity to people in our own backyard and [realising] the impact electricity has on the overall quality of life of people”, says Puneet Rustagi, Director of Business Development and Strategy for Husk Power Systems. Electricity not only provides basic amenities such as light and power to charge electronic devices, it also provides economic and social opportunities such as jobs and the chance for shops to stay open and children to study past dark.

After trying and failing to achieve their vision with various nonconventional technologies, the team stumbled across a gasifier salesman, and with him, the concept behind the now-flourishing Husk Power Systems was born. Gasification was already used in rural areas, where used rice husks – a plentiful but otherwise unusable byproduct of rice millers – fuelled gasifiers as a source of electricity. Organic waste is a rich resource in India, with its agricultural output capacity of around 800 million tonnes generating an additional 700 million tonnes of waste. About 450 million tonnes of this waste are used for fodder, leaving a 250 million tonne surplus ideal for biomass power generation.

Gasification methods in 2007, however, faced the limitation of using a dual-fuel model, which, along with rice husks, burned 35-50 per cent diesel. While this still provided significant diesel savings for a rice miller, it did not provide an economic solution for rural villages. A single-fuel model of gasification was largely considered impossible due to issues such as the significant output of tar as a byproduct of burning only rice husks. Using his engineering experience, however, Pandey was able to construct a single-fuel gasifier that burned only rice husks (and other organic waste) and produced ash and char that could be collected and used to make saleable incense sticks (pictured above) and char briquettes.

In the late summer of 2007, the small village of Tamhuka in Bihar received electricity for the first time, becoming the first – among what is now a list of 300 villages – to have a power infrastructure from Husk Power. Five years later, the company can boast of having installed 90 gasifier machines, reaching approximately 12,000 households, employing 350 people, offsetting 125-150 tonnes of CO2 per year, and saving more than 42,000 litres of kerosene and 18,000 litres of diesel.

Husk Power’s gasifier system takes biomass (ranging from rice husks to coconut shells to certain types of grasses) and burns it, giving off a producer gas. The gas is then cleaned through filters before being channelled to a gas combustion engine which generates electricity. It takes approximately two kilogrammes of feedstock to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity. If a 40-kilowatt plant operates an average of 10 hours a day throughout the year, it will require approximately 234 tonnes of biomass per year. Each gasifier plant costs $1,300 (£805) per kilowatt to install, and $0.15 (£0.09) per kilowatt hour to run.

The company’s operations are funded through several channels. Households pay a fee of US$2-3 (around £1.50) per month for enough electricity to power two fluorescent bulbs and a mobile charging station. Husk Power also monetises byproducts of the gasification process (such as the aforementioned ash and char for making incense sticks and char briquettes), and carbon offsets. In its early years, the company was funded through grants from the Shell Foundation, and later raised seed capital from social investors such as Acumen Fund, LGT Venture Philanthropy, Bamboo Finance and the International Finance Corporation. Husk Power is currently in the process of raising more funds to support its continued growth.

According to Rustagi, Husk Power’s two largest challenges have been finding manpower for middle management and getting access to capital. When asked what lessons the company has learned, he says simply: “Act, review, analyse [and] act again.

“Continuously testing your business model on the ground and revising it according to ground conditions is essential for the success of the business.”

Taking this attitude, Husk Power has big plans for the future. “The vision of Husk Power Systems”, says Rustagi, “is to provide electricity to 10 million energy-deprived people across the world in over 10,000 villages.”

When Husk Power Systems reaches its goal, India may yet again make international news for its electricity. But this time, it will make headlines for its unique and sustainable energy generation, rather than for a power loss.