Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage; in areas facing labor shortages, this allows for greater productivity at reduced cost. The most famous such program was the New Deal's Rural Electrification Administration in the United States, which pioneered many of the themes still practiced in other countries.
In impoverished and undeveloped areas, small amounts of electricity can free large amounts of human time and labor. In the poorest areas, people carry water and fuel by hand, their food storage may be limited, and their activity is limited to daylight hours. [citation needed]
Adding electric-powered wells for clean water can prevent many water-borne diseases.[vague] Refrigerators increase the time that food can be stored, potentially reducing hunger, while evening lighting can lengthen a community's daylight hours. [citation needed]
Depending on the source, rural electrification (and electricity in general) can bring problems as well as solutions. For instance, coal plants actively contribute to global warming while nuclear power creates nuclear waste.
One of the least expensive, most reliable, and best proven mains electricity distribution systems for rural electrification is single wire earth return. This system is widely used in countries such as Australia with very low populations densities. Also, there are some geographical requirements necessary for its use. Another slightly more expensive but also very commonly used system of electricity distribution is the use of single phase system which is commonly used in North America. There are many instance where these two systems are used together in the same system to serve remote and less remote rural populations.
Since modern power distribution networks can cheaply include optic fibres in the centre of one of the wires, telephone and internet service may become available with rural electrification.
Locally generated renewable energy is favored by some countries, notably China, which has one of the world's largest rural electrification programs.
China launched the China Township Electrification Program in 2001 to provide to provide renewable electricity to 1,000 townships, one of the largest such programs in the world. This is being followed by the China Village Electrification Program, also using renewable energy, aimed at electrification of a further 3.5 million households in 10,000 villages by 2010, to be followed by full rural electrification by 2015.[1]
At least half of the population of India is in villages, and most of these villages receive less than eight hours of electricity per day.
The problem is not one of distribution, but of provision. Many people attempt to steal electric power. The electric company then responds with punitive "tampering tariffs" that require payment for all the electricity that the fraudulent connections and meters might have stolen. These very high tariffs are unaffordable, resisted by all but the wealthiest users. The result is that the underfunded electric power company reduces service to the amount of electricity it can afford to produce. The electric companies therefore also prefer to serve large institutional customers that pay their bills.
The government has proposed legislation to have village leaders operate local generators run from biomass (see links). Locally-controlled generation is preferable to distant generation because the fuel, billing and controls for the generator will then be controlled by the villagers themselves, and they are thought more likely to come to an equitable arrangement among themselves.
However, there is doubt that villagers can run such an installation.
One proposal for such an installation would be to ferment the biomass, and use the resulting gas to run a clean diesel engine producing about 500 kW. Directly burning the biomass would require that it be dried from 50% water content to 10-15%, and this uses energy. In contrast, fermenting biogases is well-established technology, and produces fuel directly usable in a diesel engine. Also, since the fuel is almost pure methane, the diesel's exhaust would itself be clean drinking water, and the heat of the exhaust could be used to distill more clean drinking water.
During the 1930s most towns in Ireland were connected to the grid but the outbreak of WW2 in Europe lead to shortages of fuel and materials which brought the process to a virtual halt until the early 1950s when the Rural Electrification scheme gradually brought electric power to the countryside a process that was completed on the mainland in 1973 (but it wasn't until 2003 that the last of the inhabited offshore islands were fully connected) Nowadays the Rural Electrification scheme continues but is primairly concerned with upgrading the quality of the network (voltage fluctuations are still a problem in parts of Ireland -particularly in rural aeras) and making three phase supplies available to larger farms and rural businesses requiring it.
Before 1936, a small but growing number of farms installed small wind-electric plants. These generally used a 40V DC generator to charge batteries in the barn or the basement of the farmhouse. This was enough to provide lighting, washing machines and some limited well-pumping or refrigeration. Wind-electric plants were used mostly on the great plains, which have usable winds on most days.
In 1892, Guy Beardslee, the original owner of Beardslee Castle, was paid $40,000 to provide hydroelectric power to East Creek in New York.
In the 1936 the Rural Electrification Act was enacted. Also, the Tennessee Valley Authority is an agency involved in rural electrification.
The Rural Electrification Administration (REA), a former agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture was charged with administering loan programs for electrification and telephone service in rural areas. The REA was created in 1935 by executive order as an independent federal bureau, authorized by the United States Congress in 1936, and later in 1939, reorganized as a division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The REA undertook to provide farms with inexpensive electric lighting and power. To implement those goals the administration made long-term, self-liquidating loans to state and local governments, to farmers' cooperatives, and to nonprofit organizations; no loans were made directly to consumers. In 1949 the REA was authorized to make loans for telephone improvements; in 1988, REA was permitted to give interest-free loans for job creation and rural electric systems. By the early 1970s about 98% of all farms in the United States had electric service, a demonstration of REA's success. The administration was abolished in 1994 and its functions assumed by the Rural Utilities Service.
In 2005, a musical about the Rural Electrfication of Ireland, "The Wiremen", written by composer Shay Healy and produced by John McColgan /Moya Doherty of Riverdance fame, ran for six weeks at The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Set in the fictional village of Kilnacree in North Mayo, the story had the drama of a young local farmer resisting progress, set against the comedy and upheaval occasioned by the arrival of The Wiremen, in this case seven Dubliners, known as The Lightning Jacks.
The movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? contains a reference to Rural Electrification in the end, when the main character Everett (George Clooney) talks about how life will change with the introduction of a hydroelectric dam.
The 1937 Movie "Slim" starring Henry Fonda salutes the lineman who wired the remote parts of the United States for electric power during the 1930s and realistically details many of the dangers they faced climbing towers and working on energized high-voltage equipment. The movie is shown occasionally on Turner Classic Movies and is said to have been one of Henry Fonda's favorite roles. The beginning of the film contains a montage tribute to the men who pioneered the electric power industry and contains scenes from REA documentaries describing the electrification of America.
