Madurai: Union Minister of State for Non-Conventional Energy Sources M Kannapan on June 1 said that the ministry was assigned to electrify about 18,000 unelectrified villages in the country by 2012 of which 2,500 were already electrified using solar energy.

He added that during the Tenth Five-Year Plan the ministry has targeted 5,000 such villages for electrification.

Inaugurating the one-day seminar on 'solar thermal technologies for domestic, medical and industrial applications' orgainsed by the ministry towards popularising the use of non-conventional energy, Kannappan said that there were 18,000 villages which had not seen the conventional electricity and therefore the ministry was assigned to electrify them with various forms of non-conventional energy.

About 2,500 villages and hamlets have already been electrified through solar photovoltaic systems and power plants, he said and added that, currently photovoltaic projects were under implementation to electrify hundreds of villages in Chhatisgarh, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Tripura, Uttarchanchal, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

PTI