Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass have to play a vit
al role in the developing countries like India in order to meet the growing
energy demand. In the last five years, some renewable energy sources had e
merged as technically and economically viable alternatives in the energy se
ctor, as a result, more ambitious plans for their dissemination were being
launched. In this situation, development of an energy model exclusively for
renewables will help in the allocation of appropriate renewable energy sys
tems for different end-uses in the future. An attempt has been made to deve
lop a reliability based socio economic optimal renewable energy model for I
ndia in the year 2020-2021. The effect of social acceptance variation in OR
EM model was analysed. The lighting end-use would be met by solar PV and bi
ogas system to an extent of 0.5198 x 10(15) kJ and 0.75 x 10(15) kJ, respec
tively. Similarly, the renewable energy utilisation is found for other end-
uses. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.