73 locales in contest for title of solar energy model village

Panaji: Seventy-three villages across the state will vie among themselves to become a model solar village. The villages will have to be powered by solar energy 24x7, covering all households and public areas.
State govt has shortlisted 40 villages in North Goa and 23 villages in South Goa that are eligible to be developed as model solar villages.
The objective of the competition is to promote green and clean energy access to electricity in the villages. This initiative aims to empower village communities to become more self-reliant in meeting their energy needs and help them save money on energy bills by generating electricity locally.
A govt officer said, “Promote technologies like solar-based home lighting systems in all households, solar-based water systems in the village, solar pumps for agricultural purposes, and the installation of solar street lights covering village roads and common village infrastructure.”
The village must have a population size of more than 5,000 as per the latest published Census. However, in the case of special category states (states/UTs of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, states in the North East, including Sikkim, UTs of Andaman & Nicobar, and Lakshadweep), villages with a population size of more than 2,000, as per the latest census, will be eligible.
The selection of the village to be considered as a ‘Model Solar Village’ will be undertaken in the challenge mode. Under this mode, villages in a district will be mobilised to install distributed solar installations, especially under PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana and other govt schemes such as PM-KUSUM.
After the challenge period is over, the villages will be assessed on the total distributed renewable energy capacity installed within the revenue border of the village. The village with the highest capacity (cumulative) within its boundaries will be chosen as the ‘model solar village’ for that district.
The scheme envisages the constitution of a district-level committee (DLC) for overall monitoring and coordination for smooth implementation of the scheme at the district level. For the implementation of the competition, this committee may firstly identify villages in the district that are eligible to be considered as a model solar village. These villages will then compete during the competition period against each other for selection as the model solar village of the district.
In order to streamline the competition, the DLC may opt to identify potential candidate villages from among the eligible villages based on the feasibility of implementation of rooftop solar, community mobilisation and interest, applications by interested panchayats, etc. These potential candidate villages will then compete during the competition period against each other for selection as the model solar village of the district.