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India’s electrification efforts have improved grid penetration to rural and remote areas, yet many rural communities face significant challenges due to unreliable grid connections resulting in welfare losses, hindering economic growth and adversely affecting quality of life. A median village household in Jharkhand receives only 9 hours of electricity per day, leaving a major chunk of the rural population dependent on polluting energy sources like kerosene/diesel generators. Notwithstanding the potential of solar energy in addressing these issues, their adoption remains limited, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas. Several researchers have explored the techno-economic feasibility of solar expansion in the state. However, the role of institutional support, payment mechanisms, and reliability together in shaping adoption preferences, especially between community-owned and individual models remains underexplored in the Indian context. This study aims to bridge this gap by analyzing how rural and semi-urban energy insecure households evaluate these solar energy options, capturing their latent preferences and motivations along with economic trade-offs. This study adopts a mixed-method approach by integrating insights from key informant interviews, qualitative findings, and empirical analysis. Rural households’ preferences were captured using discrete choice experiments, whereas a contingent ranking exercise was carried out for the town dwellers. Empirical insights from both the models reveal energy insecure households strongly prefer reliability (24/7 electricity) and energy independence (ownership-based model), not emphasizing on the provider of the service. Community-owned models are strongly dispreferred. While rural respondents show price sensitivity, town dwellers indicate strong preference for high capacity models with post-sale service guarantee. Installment-based payment schemes are universally favored. Empirical findings paired with qualitative insights informed the recommendation of five targeted actionable policy insights which hold relevance for areas facing similar power reliability issues.
Keyword: Community-owned solar, preferences, WTP, decentralized renewable energy, choice experiment, contingent ranking, conditional logit, rank-ordered logit.
