(IPS) - feature Nights have acquired a new meaning for Saman Kumara, one among a small group of rural farmers in Sri Lanka's south-eastern district of Hambantota benefiting from environment-friendly technology : power generated by a windmill.

Thanks to it, 28-year-old Kumara and his family have been able to sit down to a meagre dinner in their mud-walled home under a lit bulb.

The electricity generated from the windmill has also enabled them to have light in their garden at night to ward off marauding elephants from the nearby scrub forest.

Kumara's savings have also increased after July 19, the day the windmill was installed in his backyard.

''We save a lot of money on kerosene oil, which we used before to light up our home. We also earn some extra money by charging batteries for our neighbours," says Kumara, whose windmill supplies enough power to light six bulbs, work a radio and bring life to a black-and-white television.

Similar sentiments are echoed by the few farming families in this area who have benefitted by harnessing the wind, which blows so gustily across Hambantota, the second most impoverished district in this island nation.

From car batteries to windmills

''Now there are 12 such windmill units in Hambantota,'' says Rohan Senarath, manager of the Sri Lankan programme for the Integrated Technology Development Group (ITDG), a London-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoting alternate energy sources.

Four of them have been installed by ITDG and the rest by other groups, adds Senarath, whose organisation has been working on this project since 1999.

ITDG's interest was triggered by a practice it noticed in some villages located in Sri Lanka's interior - car batteries being used to provide power for homes.

Some families had to walk 15 to 20km to the nearest town to get the batteries charged, says Senarath. ''They lost labour hours, at least two days, through this exercise.''

Thereafter, a simple design for electricity generation was drawn up, a specialist brought from Scotland and the know-how gradually transferred to a small, local entrepreneur and the project got underway.

The first to benefit from windmill power was Samarasinghe Sirisena, a farmer. Under this pilot project, Sirisena was able to light five bulbs in his two-room home, have the radio come alive and watch black-and-white television.

Demand rising

The initial success of this venture comes in the wake of another achievement - the use of solar power to provide alternate sources of energy to Sri Lanka's rural poor.

The solar power initiative, spearheaded by a private company, has already caught on among village communities. During the first half of this year, for instance, some 2,200 solar-power units had been sold, a huge increase from the 300 similar units sold when it was introduced in 1999.

The welcome response by the country's rural poor to such initiatives is understandable, since they are among the nearly 50 percent of Sri Lankan households in a population of 19 million that do not have electricity.

Indeed, they are unlikely to get it in the next decade due to the high cost of installation and the rising demand for power among current users.

According to government data, 47 percent of households - mostly rural homes - do not have access to the national grid of the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB).

The demand for electricity is rising by an average of eight percent per year while the present demand is expected to double by 2010, according to the Central Bank's annual report for 2000.

With the country's hydropower resources unable to meet the demand, dependence on thermal power has risen sharply to 35 percent of total power needs in 2000 from 20 percent in the 1990s.

Delays in launching a major coal power plant on the western coast due to protests from residents and environmentalists have also stalled CEB plans to increase energy resources.

Drawback

This year, Sri Lanka's power problem was compounded by a severe drought, resulting in eight-hour power cuts daily until the monsoon rains began a few weeks back. So desperate was the situation that in early September temples, churches, and mosques conducted prayers for rain.

Rural farmers like Kumara were not affected, though, due to his alternate energy source - wind power. The windmill venture is sustainable, too, since 95 percent of the materials needed are available in the country.

However, there is a drawback - the wind is unpredictable. This kind of technology is only suitable in certain areas such as the flat stretches in southern and eastern Sri Lanka, affirms Senarath.

But for the moment, those who benefit from it, like 39-year-old Sirimalee Ihaalakodippily, are more interested in talking about the new light in their lives. It has enabled children to study at night, she says.

Likewise, the few farmers with windmill power in their homes have an edge over the others and have been able to work at night, cleaning the vegetables harvested from their fields and having them ready for sale in the market the next morning.

''Life has definitely become easier with power,'' says Ihalakodippily, gently rocking her three-year-old son.