Power

Power Crisis that Will not go Away

M A Pai

In the media we generally hear about how generating capacity has increased, how consumption has increased etc but not whether the power sector is able to meet the PEAK demand. Thus with a generating capacity of 150GW (1GW=1000MW) and estimated peak demand of 103GW, we can serve a peak load of only 93GW. In most countries, which are economically developed, a peak demand of close to 80% of generation capacity is met with a high degree of reliability. Even if we reach a figure of 70% we can meet the peak demand. This requires a high degree of coordination between supply of fuel, its transportation and the usage. Thus it is akin to a supply chain management model in the IT sector mere Increase in energy consum-ption in terms of MWh while useful is not a true indicator and does not fully explain why we have the power cuts across the country. There in lies the essentials of the power crisis that India faces.


The fact that we are doing OK industrially is because of captive power plants (notably in IT sectors) and power outages for the industrial sector are kept minimal. The people who suffer are the average citizens both urban and rural. Hence they need to resort to inverters if they can afford .A country rich with talent in power deserves better. True rural electrification seems to be a distant dream.

On the positive side a novel scheme of maintaining frequency close to 50 cycles per second has helped the grid operation. It is important therefore for the public to know why the peak demand is not met with available generation capacity.

Instead of chasing solar power, solar lantern technology etc the country should concentrate on running the grid efficiently with good engineering skill set either available readily or can be generated internally.