More than 300 million people in India lack basic electricity service, and of those with electricity, 40% report outages of at least 4 hours per day or intermittent supply on a daily basis (Banerjee et al. 2014). Poor electricity service in rural areas stems partly from uncertainties such as the reliability of existing grid services, plans for grid expansion, and the unknown capacity of commercial and residential customers to pay for additional services.

This project aims to quantify the value of reliable electricity supply and understand how consumers choose among different electrification options, such as micro-grids, solar home systems, and solar lanterns. This work will contribute to planning and policy recommendations for rural electrification and enhance our understanding of how to make optimal infrastructure investments for different customers given high levels of uncertainty. Working with on-the-ground partners, we plan to test whether a variety of technical and management-based solutions can improve on current electricity services.