In UP, this village of 500 residents is untouched by LPG crisis

Residents get a steady supply of fuel twice a day — 6.30 am to 9 am and the same hours in the evening — through biogas.

“We know the timings, so we finish cooking in that period. It hasn’t caused us any difficulty,” says Pushpa. She pays Rs 400 a month for the supply.

Chandra Prakash Singh (30) is the brain behind the biogas plant. He completed his B.Tech from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal and returned to his village in 2016 to extend the family-run Nandsadan gaushala. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

After the plant came up in 2022, 180 of 125 households have shifted to biogas.

“While LPG scarcity has become a major issue elsewhere, it is not a concern in our village,” says Raj Kumar Yadav (36).

The idea

The plant has been set up on a 700-750 sq-ft plot owned by village resident and engineer Chandra Prakash Singh (30).

In 2016, Chandra, who studied B.Tech at Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, returned home to man the family-run Nandsadan gaushala.

His father, Nagendra Pratap Singh (58), had been running the business with around 50 cows on a 4-acre space.

Soon, the number of cattle rose to around 200 but managing nearly 3,000 kg of dung every day was a challenge. “It was then that I learned about biogas plants and how dung could be put to productive use,” Chandra adds.

He says he approached several firms involved in biogas plant installation before connecting with Pune-based SAAf Energy.

Chandra Prakash says gas production varies with the seasons: it is about 80-100 cubic metres a day in summer and 50-70 cubic metres during winter. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

Construction began in 2021, and the facility became operational a year later. Biogas is supplied through a network of plastic pipelines stretching nearly 3.7 km across the village. “Nearly 100 cubic metres of gas is generated each day,” says Chandra.

He claims the facility is likely the only one in the state where the entire gas output is utilised for community use.

SAAf Energy co-founder Harshad Kulkarni says they were handed the project by a non-profit organisation, Sustain Plus Foundation.

He says they shortlisted three-four candidates before picking Chandra, who he came to know through the National Dairy Development Board in Gujarat. The total cost of setting up the plant was around Rs 80-85 lakh.

As per the agreement, Kulkarni says, the plant will be operated by them for 10 years, after which it will be handed over to Chandra.

‘Costs less than LPG’

According to residents, initially, there was resistance to the idea.

Komal Yadav, son of village pradhan Nagina Devi and a retired Army personnel, says many villagers refused to allow pipelines to be laid beneath their fields or outside their homes.

“Soon, people understood the benefits of biogas as it is cheaper — it is half the rate of an LPG cylinder (around Rs 978),” says resident Radhey Lal.

The village, 25 km from the district headquarters, has a mixed population of Rajputs, Yadavs and Muslims. Residents run small businesses, work in private and government jobs, or are into agriculture.

Each household has a meter, and residents are charged based on how much gas they use.

Consumption varies with the family size: smaller households typically use around 0.7 to 0.8 cubic metres of gas a day, while larger families require about 1 cubic metre. Priced at Rs 20 per cubic metre, it translates into a monthly bill of roughly Rs 500 to Rs 800 per household.

But residents have not entirely given up their LPG connections, with some keeping cylinders as a backup. “If guests arrive unexpectedly and we need to cook something quickly, we use LPG,” says Anita Yadav. “One cylinder can now last a family for three to four months.”

Residents also say there is no difference in cooking time as compared to LPG. “Since supply is limited to certain hours, we begin our preparations early,” says Savita Devi (45). With a family of three, her monthly bill is also about Rs 400.

We know the timings, so we finish all our cooking within that period, says Pushpa Singh (55), a resident of Ekauni village in UP’s Chandauli district. (Express Photo: Vishal Srivastav)

Local gas agency dealer Sandeep Kumar Singh points out that sales from this village are quite low and there is no struggle for LPG.

According to Chandra, gas production varies with the seasons: it is about 80-100 cubic metres a day in summer and 50-70 cubic metres during winter. He says efforts are on to extend biogas connections to the remaining households once production increases.

The residue left after processing the dung is converted into fertiliser — approximately one tractor-load produced each day — which is sold to farmers, he adds.

Bijendra Kumar, District Development Manager (NABARD) in Chandauli, said the administration is aware of the biogas project in Ekauni village and officials visit the site regularly.

How the plant works
-According to Chandra, dung from the gaushala is deposited in a pit.
-It is mixed with water in a 1:1 ratio before being fed into the biogas unit, which has a capacity of handling five to six tonnes at a time.
-Methane is generated through anaerobic digestion and purified before use.
-The gas is stored in a balloon-like chamber — it has a capacity of around 150 cubic metres — mounted atop the facility, from where it is supplied to households through pipelines.
-Two workers man the facility.