Renewable Energy

1. In Auroville energy will be consumed as a means to achieve a higher level of collective consciousness rather than for the fulfilment of personal desires and comforts.
2. Auroville will be a township that consumes energy only from sustainable energy sources.
3. To the extent that Auroville uses energy from non-sustainable sources for the building of the town, surplus sustainable energy shall be produced to compensate for such consumption.
4. A change of consciousness and the transformation of matter are essential to achieve ultimate integral sustainability.

Since 2014 Auroville has been developing its own underground electricity grid. Eventually all zones of Auroville will be connected to an Auroville owned and managed HT and LT underground electrical infrastructure. Solar energy exported by Auroville owned buildings that are connected to the Auroville grid is consumed by other buildings connected to the same grid. Export of surplus solar energy to the public electricity grid will be minimized and the majority of self-generated renewable energy is absorbed by local Auroville loads.

A next logical step is to scale up the distributed renewable energy generation capacity within Auroville and to add grid-balancing technologies such as electricity storage and demand side management. This will allow for an acceleration of the transition to a sustainable energy future with the distributed nature of the resources contributing to a greater resilience. 

Smart Min Grid Project 

The Auroville Smart Mini Grid project seeks to deploy and integrate renewables and energy storage technologies with the mini-grids and demonstrate scalable and financially viable examples of resilient, smart, and interconnected mini-grids to tackle issues of energy security, affordability, climate resilience, and mitigation. It is foreseen that this approach can be adopted by campuses, urban centres, and by electricity utilities at a wider scale and will serve as a case study to inform policymakers and urban decision-makers.

The Auroville Smart Mini Grid integrates state-of-the-art technology solutions, such as distributed generation, energy storage systems, active demand response, energy efficiency, smart metering, and advanced consumer information systems to establish a proof of concept that 100% renewable energy (mini) grids are possible and cost-efficient. The term “mini-grid” in this context refers to a sub-grid of the public electricity grid, which is connected to the public grid. It is foreseen that this approach can be adapted by cities, campuses, and industrial parks, but equally so by electricity utilities. Therefore, the Auroville Smart Grid Initiative will also serve as a case study to inform policymakers and urban decision-makers for consecutive replication and wide-scale adaptation. The Auroville Smart Mini Grid Initiative started in 2019.