A Roadmap For The Government – What It Should Do To Provide 24X7 Power To Entire India By 2019

“We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100-watt light bulb.” – Bill Bryson

In 1974, a Hindi film that was tellingly titled Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, literally meaning ‘Food, Clothing, and a Dwelling of One’s Own’, found strong resonance with the masses. It advocated the idea – albeit in a simplistic manner – that in a successful socialism, those were the three preconditions of the people that the government must fulfill as the first step to ‘good governance’.

One can say with a certain amount of confidence that if the filmmaker were to make the film today, he would, in all likelihood, include a fourth element in his titular list of necessities: Electricity.

In mid-2014, shortly after “the election that changed India”, the newly-elected central government declared its intention of providing affordable, reliable, and round-the-clock power supply to all by 2019 under the Power for All scheme.

However, this was easier said than done, mostly because despite India being a global leader in power production, more than a third of all Indian households is as yet without access to electricity. The twin problems of shortage of supply and intervallic supply that still plague a number of states – for example, Maharashtra and Karnataka – are not restricted to domestic consumption alone: commercial and industrial consumers are equal sufferers.

Although India is capable of producing over 250 gigawatt of electricity annually, the peak demand that the power sector is able to meet is only about 50-55% of this. The prime reason behind this is that our coal and gas power plants, which are forced to operate below their optimal capacity due to various factors, such as fuel supply constraints and transmission constraints, among others, are unable to meet the power sector’s demands.

Obstacles there are aplenty in the way of development, in the form of some fundamental problems that our power sector has been grappling with for long. To begin with, there is a vast disconnect between producers and distributors. The existing transmission infrastructure is not robust enough to transfer excess power between states, making it difficult for non-power-producing states to buy low-priced power. The gap between cost of delivery of power and the consumers’ ability to pay for it is yet to be bridged. Domestic production of coal needs to be increased by approximately 50%. Theft of coal during delivery is a serious issue that has been plaguing the power sector and the manufacturing industry for a long time.

Despite these obstacles, the union government in its two-and-a-half years has shown a laudable sense of commitment towards its declared objective of bringing about a transformative change in India’s power outreach and consumption scenario. For starters, over 7,500 villages – out of a targeted 18,000+ – have been electrified under the Deendayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY). India has added over 2,300 MW to its wind power generation capacity. The drive for clean energy has received a boost with India getting over $1 billion in international investment in clean energy, while adding nearly 2 GW of solar power in the first half of the current financial year. At the behest of the central government, state-run enterprises have pledged to invest over Rs. 55,000 crores for improving grid connectivity. But there is still a long way to go.

If the Ministry of Power wants to successfully complete its mission of bringing about the change in the power scenario it has often spoken of, here are some recommendations for it to mull over:

• Boost the country’s capacity for generating and storing power (generation capacity needs to be increased by at least 50%) and pare the losses incurred during the transmission and distribution phases.
• Allow the power-distributing agencies to contract long-term power supply in their respective supply areas and ensure the recovery of debt-ridden distributors so they can set up tariffs that reflect the real cost of power.
• Establish a renewable energy management system capable of monitoring and managing generation of renewable energy on a real-time basis, especially in those states where the gulf between demand and supply – for both domestic and industrial consumption – is wider than the average difference. Renewable energy must be driven as the life-force of the future of the power scenario. As Jill Stein has put it so remarkably, “We can, and must, shift to an economy in which 100% of our electricity is generated renewably.”
• Adopt and implement energy efficiency measures to moderate the peak demand and consumption in the power-starved states, such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, to name a few.
• Increase the supply of coal and gas to the power sector and ensure there is no break in their transportation to the power generation plants.
• Coal being a limited resource, set up alternate sources of electricity generation – gas-based, hydro-based, solar-based, and wind-based – to meet the projected demand.
• Improve the infrastructure for power transmission to meet the ever-increasing energy needs of the country. Presently, India’s transmission capacity is woefully short of the generation capacity and market requirements. Various factors constrain the flow of excess energy from power-surplus areas of one state to power-deficit areas of another, thereby impacting the manufacturing sector and other areas of requirement greatly.
• Scale up the country’s distribution networks so they can withstand the extra load required to ensure electrification of the un-electrified households and bump up the coal-carrying capacity of Indian Railways by at least 50%.

The funding requirement is massive. However, it is expected that appropriate mobilization of investments through both public and private sectors will help to attain the desired goals.