How much electricity does the Warangal rice mill cluster use, and what does one mill's share look like?

The 110 mills in Warangal town used 17.65 million kWh for about 6 lakh t of rice, roughly 12,000 t CO2 a year. A 1 t an hour raw rice mill uses 38.6 kWh per tonne, well above the 17 to 23 kWh benchmark; a 2 t an hour mill uses 23.1.

Three kinds of mill

• Warangal town: 73 raw rice mills, 35 parboiled and 2 kallam; the district association counts 275.
• April to May paddy suits boiled rice; November to January paddy mostly goes to raw rice.
• Parboiled mills burn their own rice husk, 61,800 t a year, in boilers for soaking and drying; surplus husk is sold.
• Rice goes to the FCI and other buyers.

kWh per tonne of rice, by mill

• Raw, 1 t an hour (24 mills): 38.63.
• Raw, 2 t an hour (49 mills): 23.09.
• Parboiled, 2, 3 and 4 t an hour: 26.96, 28.28 and 33.95, plus 265, 216 and 195 kg of husk per tonne.

Work out your own share

1. Add the year's kWh from your bills, and DG diesel if any.
2. Divide by tonnes of rice out, not paddy in, to compare with the figures above.
3. Multiply kWh by 0.675 and diesel litres by 2.645 for fossil CO2.
4. Show husk burnt as tonnes on a separate biogenic line.

Husk you sell

Husk sold to a power plant or another mill leaves with its carbon. Record tonnes sold and to whom; the buyer, not you, reports burning it.

One mill of each kind (estimate)

• Raw, 1 t an hour: 92,720 kWh for 2,400 t = 62.6 t CO2, 26 kg per tonne
• Raw, 2 t an hour: 110,853 kWh for 4,800 t = 74.8 t CO2, 15.6 kg per tonne
• Parboiled, 4 t an hour: 326,003 kWh for 9,600 t = 220 t CO2, 22.9 kg per tonne, plus 1,872 t husk
• The 1 t an hour mill at 23 kWh per tonne would save 37,440 kWh, about 25 t CO2 a year
• Cluster: 17.65 million kWh = 11,912 t; 35.5 kL diesel = 94 t; about 12,000 t

Per mill figures are the study group averages in BEE's energy conservation manual for the Warangal cluster; CO2 at the CEA FY 2025-26 grid factor.

What Senseible does here

Put your kWh and tonnes into the calculators for a per tonne figure; Senseible can read a season's electricity bills into one record so the comparison holds next year.

• Carbon calculators
• Husk sold: who claims it
• Rice mill energy benchmark

Sources: BEE SME programme, Manual on energy conservation measures in rice milling cluster, Warangal, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector (grid factor 0.675 kg CO2 per kWh, FY 2025-26), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel emission factors)

Last reviewed 2026-10-31.