The power system in India has been experiencing pressure in bridging the demand and supply gap. The gap has been increasing because of challenges in the availability of good quality coal—close to 60% of 240 GW installed capacity is met by this fuel, and delayed environment clearances to new projects.
Aggregated technical and commercial loss is way beyond best-in-class ratio, and is in the range of 25% to 40%. The absence of concerted efforts to educate the public about energy conservation is also a challenge. The US spends close to $100m in educating the youngsters about renewable energy. India needs to progressively implement such initiatives. If there is one-hour power cut in a city like Bengaluru, one could imagine what could be status in other parts of the country.
The core issue, however, is the reputation of the utilities in terms of financial health and project execution. Most power utilities, barring a few central and state utilities, face these issues. Besides, our “say-to-do ratio” is so bad that it puts off investors.
In a country of 1.2 billion people, there exists many opportunities linked power capacity enhancement. When quality electricity is made available, manufacturing gets revived, agro-industries gets pushed, storage of agro-products gets importance, the demand could surely grow manifold. India’s per capita consumption is still only about a third of developed nations’ This calls for capacity enhancements at a large scale.
Ultra mega power plants, PV solar plants, hydro-power plants, wind energy systems are all need to be there.
Efficiency improvements in the transmission & distribution networks are also vital. It has to move much further than automatic meter reading. Smart Grids have been discussed for too long and we are already late. Focused efforts are required for seamless integration and addressing the complete value chain, from generation to the end consumer.
The ambitious smart cities initiative also required a better power scenario. For the city to be smart, the power situation has to be smart—it is a basic necessity to attract other partners to the concept. Smart grids are indeed an immediate need.
Demand side management and differential tariff are needed to bring about discipline in the usage of electricity. This would also make renewable energy (RE) integration into the grid easier.
Micro grids (both DC and AC islanded) could be an area for reaching the remote places of India to facilitate inclusive development. These pose little or no technical challenges. All we need are policy changes and willingness to improve our approaches to aid inclusive growth. India announced the ambitious Power for All by 2012—this is still a distant dream, and nearly 300 million people are still without power. We really do need to work on our say-to-do ratio.
By Prakash Nayak
The author is chairman, IET India Power Panel