Abstract

Rural energy planning depends solely on the existing levels of energy consumption in domestic sector. In India, energy requirements for cooking and water heating depend predominantly on biomass fuels, which are often burnt in traditional stoves (efficiency < 10%), while kerosene and electricity are used for lighting. A sound environmental development of a re­gion needs promotion of conservation activities among local communities and application of traditional environmentally sound technologies. Environmental research activities in recent years have generated large data on energy processes, mainly on commercial sources of energy such as, coal, oil, natural gas, and electricity are generally available, a lot of effort is still required to quantify traditional sources of energy. In this regard, Decision Support System (DSS) with relevant data help the decision makers to take appropriate timelier decisions and assist in the evaluation of reliability and the generation of alter­natives. DSS incorporates simulation and optimization models with interactive graphics capabilities to encourage the ac­ceptance of analyzing techniques in practice. This paper presents a conceptual framework for analyzing energy consumption at domestic sector via DSS. The framework is based on material flux, comparative analyses of village level domestic energy consumption patterns across various zones considering regional and seasonal variations. It also differentiates between household activities like cooking, water heating, and space heating which are the major end use activities. The system with a synergistic integration of software tools will assist decision makers in understanding the process status better and also aid in providing timelier decisions and efficient outputs. DSS is validated with the data pertaining to energy situation of Kolar dis­trict Stratified random survey covering 2500 households distributed uniformly over the district shows that most households stilI use traditional stoves for cooking (97.9%) and water heating (98.3%). Energy analysis shows that the consumption ranges as follows: fuel wood for cooking, 0.69±0.34- 1.42±0.27 kg/capita/d; electricity for lighting, 5.17±2.l6-6.57±4.07 kWh/capita/month; kerosene for cooking, 0.44±0.16-l±0.76 l/capita/month; LPG for cooking, 0.18 ±0.05-1.03 ±1.35 kg/capita/month; and, biogas for lighting, 0.6±0.29-0.76±0.28 m³/capita/d.