Ramehar Singh of Silani village is using poultry waste as feed material for running his 65 KVA (50 Kw) biogas plant for 14 hours a day for the last three months, making him self-reliant in electricity needs.
He has also surrendered his connection from state electricity department.
For 20 long years, Ramehar Singh had been running his poultry farm on power supply from the state electricity board and on diesel genset, paying electricity bill of Rs 45,000 and diesel bill of Rs 1.2 lakh every month.
After installation of the biogas power plant, he now pays diesel bill of Rs 60,000 only and does not draw power from the state electricity board.
The initiative taken to convert litter into fuel for power plant has helped him save about Rs 1 lakh every month.
He installed three biogas digesters at the cost of Rs 30.3 lakh on the plant.
Keeping in view the success of the litter-based power plant and the available potential in the state, the department organised a one-day visit of about 100 poultry farm owners from various districts last week to the farm of Ramehar Singh to get them a first-hand experience of power generation from poultry litter and to enable them to gain from the experience of Ramehar Singh.
A spokesman of the department said that there were about 30 million poultry heads in Haryana.
Since the litter of 100 birds can produce one unit of electricity per day, there is enough potential to produce three lakh units of electricity per day by using poultry litter as the feed.
"Besides, it will help avoid flaring of 100 tonne methane per day into the atmosphere," the spokesman added.
He disclosed that under the Biogas Based Distributed/Grid Power Generation Programme (BGGP), the Union Ministry of New Renewable Energy provided financial assistance to farm owners who were interested in setting up biogas-based power plants ranging from Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 per kW, depending upon the generation capacity.
Besides, support was also provided for preparation of detailed project report, he said.
