New Delhi: With thousands of Indian villages still without electricity, renewable energy in the form of solar photovoltaic (SPV) cells could be an effective and cheap way to light up these areas, says an official of German solar energy major Conergy.

According to Jan Hartzel, corporate marketing director of Conergy, the market for SPV will grow 35 percent annually in the next five years.

India has around 80,000 villages without electricity and 25,000-odd among them have little chance of being connected to the power grid in the conventional way.

In this scenario, renewable energy could play a huge role in bridging the gap, Hartzel told IANS during a visit here.

Since it started its India subsidiary in Bangalore in February, the Conergy group - with revenues at 743 million euro ($1.08 billion) in 2006 and expected to touch 1 billion euro ($1.45 billion) this year - has provided electricity through the solar photovoltaic (SPV) route to 250 villages in the Satara region of Maharashtra.

Hartzel said the group had big plans for India in all the major fields of renewable energy generation, including through SPV, solar thermal, wind energy, bio energy and geothermal energy. But SPV was the immediate focus, he said.