Rural Electrification  program because of the highly capital intensive nature of the equipment, wide spread and scattered network leading to difficulty in maintenance, and lengthy lines and isolated and scattered loads leading to high distribution losses.  Due to remuneration and highly subsidized tariff, the  RE program is financially unviable. In such  a situation, of scarce resources on the one hand, and commitment to bring electricity to all the villages on the other, the only way out was to devise ways and means of bringing out cost-effective and technically superior systems for rural electrification.

With active association of the SEBs, manufacturers and research institutes, REC brought out standards and specifications for RE construction materials including conductors, transformers, insulators, circuit-breakers, energy meters etc. and evolved construction practices for laying of HT/LT lines, erection of substations etc.

With the availability of such REC standards, the manufacturers were able to produce cost-effective and better equipment's for adoption and use by all the SEBs in the country.  However, due to financial constraints there is a huge gap between the demand and supply of power in the country.



Developments on cheap solar technology is considered a potential alternative that allows an electricity infrastructure consisting of a network of local-grid clusters with distributed electricity generation. That could allow bypassing, or at least relieving the need of installing expensive, and loss, long-distance centralized power delivery systems and yet bring cheap electricity to the masses.