[indogooner]

Yeah but the developing countries do not have that much of a power requirement. In India most villages would be fine with just the fans and lighting. 5 units (kWh) should be sufficient for the whole day for a household. I am not sure how much of £1.66m was on solar.

[jdmichal]

If we look at Google Fiber and start applying that kind of costing model... Most of that money went to digging and laying the underground grid to every building. While not doing it underground would be cheaper, there's still going to be a big outlay in materials and time to run overhead line to every building.

[davedx]

5 kwh still sounds like a lot. Our house in the Netherlands uses about 10/day with a family of 6.

[indogooner]

Actually a large part of rural India still uses 60/100W light bulbs (filament ones) instead of LEDs as they are much cheaper(1/15th). I took 75W ceiling fans + 100W for the bulbs ~ (75W20hrs + 60W10hrs)*3rooms. I agree this is still on the higher side as all fans won't be running all the time and would be zero during winters (~3 months).