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Overview
What Is the Smart Grid?
India endured the world's largest power failure today (July 31), with a blackout that affected 700 million people, including the nation's capital of New Delhi. Trains and subway systems stopped, while private businesses and hospitals geared up their generators, the New York Times reported. Today's blackout followed another large outage yesterday, which affected 350 million people.
Although record-setting in size, the blackout wasn't entirely unexpected. India is chronically short on power, and Indian cities regularly experience temporary power cuts, as many outlets reported. Today's and yesterday's outages underscore longer-term questions about how India can continue to supply its citizens' and businesses' growing demand for electricity.
Also in question is how India will deliver electricity to all its residents in the future. Only nine of India's 28 states have full access to electricity, according to the BBC. If the Indian power structure can't keep up with demand, the situation will threaten India's growth and stability, according to the National Bureau of Asian Research.
Analysts and officials have searched for roots to India’s power problem in several places, hoping to answer several questions: "Why now?" "Why this year?" and "What's wrong with India?"
For this particular blackout, India's home minister, Sushilkumar Shinde—promoted today to his post from the power ministry—said officials don't yet know what's to blame. A grid malfunction in the northern city of Agra may be the cause, the International Business Times reported.
Another culprit may be northern Indian states drawing more power from the country's grid than they were allotted. India has circuit breakers to cut off power to states that overdraw, but state officials may have told the circuit breaker personnel not to shut off their power, Surendra Rao, former chairman of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, told the New York Times. Federal officials will penalize overdrawing states, Shinde told the New York Times.
In addition, this year, delayed monsoon rains increased farmers' demand for irrigation-related electricity while reducing the water available for hydroelectricity, which accounts for 20 percent of India's grid, according to Businessweek and Reuters.
Taking the long view, a BBC analysis found India has the financial means to eliminate its chronic power shortage, but suffers problems in "the delivery process."
"Bankrupt state-run electricity boards, an acute shortage of coal, skewed subsidies which end up benefiting rich farmers, power theft, and underperforming private distribution agencies are to blame," wrote Soutik Biswas, the BBC's Delhi correspondent.
To examine coal: It provides 60 percent of India's power and just one government-owned company, Coal India, is responsible for much of the country's supply. Yet Coal India often falls short of its targets. Coal-based electricity was historically cheap in India, but is now getting more expensive, National Geographic reported. Coal plants also face opposition from environmental groups.
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17 Comments
Add CommentWelcome to tomorrow. This is going to be more and more common. Is India at peak coal yet? I don't know but I know that China is, so importing coal (like India is trying to) isn't going to get any cheaper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia unlike Canada, the USA, Japan and most of Europe is ACTUALLY doing something about their reliance on fossil fuels by undertaking a major, innovative, domestic Nuclear Program, leading to an energy supply that will mostly come from clean, green thorium nuclear reactors. While the USA and Canada continue to abandon their once great lead in Nuclear tech, the undeveloping nations, with a fatal brain disease - the Greenie Cultism, which is bankrolled by Oil & Gas, which really wants the status quo to continue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia, unlike Canada & the USA, has an active innovative Nuclear program which will lead to India becoming self-sufficient in Energy, whereas Canada & the USA will become increasingly dependent on Middle East Oil & Gas - contrary to the hype and delusions that sleazy Oil/NG disinformation spin doctors tell you 10,000X per day in high priced news commercials. And the Creepoids in the World Bank & the IMF refuse to finance India's ZERO CO2 Nuclear Development but they are quite happy to give them $billions for smoke belching, child-killing giant Coal burning monsters. Same as they have done for South Africa, ZIP in funding for their innovative indigenous, super-safe, exportable Pebble Bed Modular reactors - basically just a tank with self-regulating, meltdown proof nuclear fuel pebbles in it - but nope the World Bank and the IMF can't have that - they finance giant Coal Dirt Burners in South Africa. Criminals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia's highly successful indigenous program of PHWRs and Fast Reactors will produce a Thorium based economy. Trivial amounts of thorium will supply all of India's Energy needs:
www.world-nuclear.org/info/default.aspx?id=338&terms=india
Government run electric monopoly, government run coal monopoly, government run grid, government control of distribution, government monopoly on production, government bureaucrats appointed to be in charge of it all, government, government, government. I think the problem is obvious here. Government is not supposed to be running anything like this. It is almost amusing watching this bastion of progressive, euro socialist economics. Government monopolies (the only type of monopoly that can exist) running something as important and core to modern existence as power production and delivery, the beauty of it all and so many in the US and Europe want to continue on this path.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia if you want to fix your power problems, it is called capitalism. Consumers buy power from business who deliver power for a price you are willing to pay, if the business cant deliver, you move to someone else and that business shuts down. The first step... get the government out of electricity business. You notice that because the government created itself as a monopoly(again, monopolies can only exist when governments make laws making them and protecting them) the government monopoly never shuts down, never improves because there is no reason for them too. They get to over charge for everything and they dont have to deliver because you the customer have no where else to go.
Government is the problem, everywhere.
You actually believe India is the bastion of environmental perfection? India? Let me know when the stop using the Ganges as a cemetery, bath tub and sewer before you make claims like that. I have been there, it is one of the most polluted countries I have ever been in. Sure they are smart to use pebble bed reactors and more power to them but they are a long long way from protecting the environment to the level of the US.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think I will stick with the US for the environment, the actual leader in cleaning up the environment.
Absolutely. I spent a few weeks there last year and I was overwhelmed with the level of pollution there. It's so bad that the Taj Mahal actually started to be affected. Now you can only drive electric cars around it. The US is leaps and bounds better than India when it comes to environmental conservation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe peak coal....there's lots of coal. Vast reserves in Australia, Canada, Russia. Environmental concerns with coal are not based in China or India but in development of those resources in the producing countries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny concern expressed by China or india over environmental degredation is pure lip service. It's full speed ahead with growth. This may change as people become more affluent in those counrtries but in the meantime believe ZERO what those governments say about the environment. They arent lying as much as they have no means of enforcing regulations.
This is not a new thing in India I lived there in the early 70ies. We used to have periods over weeks where we hardly ever had more than 180 Volts out of a 220 V network. Then once for a week the Voltage dropped to 110 Volts. The whole system was never maintained properly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgovt control and regulation is a boon than a bane. when privatized the rich 1% took the rest for a ride as they did in the USA,UK and Europe . At least in india things are in the hands of the 99 % .At any rate our suffering is much less than that of the west . No one can have a perfect system.Our failures are due to our own limitations and not due to the exploitation of the few rich .India's is a social economy and lets keep it that way only. Lets india not be mislead to go to capitalist market economy . never mind, we will take our failings our way and not try to solve it the way vested interests want it . We are called backward by the westerners not because we are poorer or backward .its only because we don't give away our money to them by buying their goods and financial services at a price set by them. India is doing much better than the westerners . their consumerist goods are being now brought to india as they don't have money in their own countriesto buy them .lets not fall for them .BEWARE INDIA!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDude, why do you invent things that I did not say? Yep, India is a general disaster, but in Nuclear tech, which IS Energy tech, they make the USA look so pathetic as to be just a joke. Sad thing is the USA invented the tech and then abandoned it because Big Carbon wanted that and bought the politicians to make it happen. So yep, over the short term India will remain a disaster, but over the long term they will straighten that out, with their indigenous Nuclear Program, they will be able to sell there reactors worldwide, while the USA is continuing its decline into an anti-technology abyss.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe China will agree to buy the US in a few decades - cheap.
You do realize the 1% you speak of is politicians and bureaucrats or their sycophants. India should not be misled into capitalism? You also realize capitalism is simply the natural way people trade? Instead you promote more socialism? Do show me the communist nation that has been successful? China? which is going capitalist in its economy(capitalism is not a form of government).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have seen the results of a socialist economy, the government of india just put 700 million people in the dark. Consequently, the power companies and distrubution of energy in the USA, Europe and everywhere is more socialist than capitalist because the industry is so heavily regulated into government protected monopolies and so heavily taxed they may as well be owned by the government.
So you are right, lets not have india continue to follow the western world down the path of government monopolized electricity, India should go down the long proven but unused path of capitalism and perhaps they will not see the problems with power they have seen for decades.
Totally agree they are intelligent for using the technology and maybe even the leaders in this specific technology now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I disagree with were the claims that India is somehow removing dependency on fossil fuels and is the leader in this area. They are not and far from it. They have smoke belching coal plants also and with the massive population, most of which not getting reliable power, India will be increasing power production by orders of magnitude for decades to come, just to catch up and keep up with their own population. The could not build enough pebble bed reactors fast enough to displace any fossil fuel use.
Not sure what you are saying about the so called evil oil and coal companies. Energy companies are in the end all owned by the same group of companies and they will make money from whatever fuel is used to make energy. This is sort of like those who believe the same oil companies are against some sort of alternative to oil, which is ridiculous because if an oil company invented the alternative, they could charge 4 times more for the alternative and get more profit. So the greedier they are the better, they will move to what is profitable always.
I did add some stuff about environmentalism because most people who push for nukes do it based on this as well, which you mentioned in comments about smoke belching coal plants. Perhaps I read more into those comments than you intended.
The problem is that Big Oil/NG interests, have been financing ENGO's like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NIRS, UCS, WWF etc to blockade alternatives to Oil/NG (mostly NG) namely Coal, Methanol and Nuclear. Also EV tech. And that has expanded, to believe it or not, blockading competitors in the Big Oil game. Anti-Tar Sands ENGO's, native groups, politicians and media have been getting $billions in funding from super rich foundations, legal/lobby firms & anonymous gargantuan personal donations. In this case, some Oil vested interests, most likely OPEC related, just don't want the competition from North America's largest by far Oil reserves. And quite apparently there are USA Oil Interests, perhaps refineries that are funding native groups in British Columbia, ENGO's, media to oppose any shipment of Tar Sands Oil to China for refining.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is damn obvious that Big Carbon is funding and caused the extraordinary blockade of the rapidly rising Nuclear build in the 70's & 80's. A build that if it had continued would have replaced every baseload Coal and NG power plant in the USA.
Chesapeake Energy was caught financing ENGO's like the Sierra Club to block Nuclear & Coal power with non-stop lawsuits, as they have been doing. Just that one NG company funneled $25M into the Sierra Club to fund their campaigns, with an agreement of $30M more, which the Sierra Club executive lied about until they got caught red handed, and consequently they refused to call Shale Gas the Environmental Disaster that it obviously is, and instead referred to NG as a "transition fuel". One of Sierra Clubs execs, a person with integrity, resigned from them, writing of her "disgust" of the cozy relationship of ENGOs with NG interests, biggest in North America being Exxon.
The Indian government has already traced funding for a series of anti-nuclear protests and blockades in India to super-rich foundations and ENGOs in the USA and Europe.
priddseren, you need to realize that Energy is a ZERO-SUM game, and a $100 trillion is at stake on who gets to supply the world's energy. Just the anti-nuclear hysteria after the ZERO-DEATH fukushima incident, in the mainstream media, promoted by wealthy ENGO's, has netted at least $5 trillion in increased LNG sales and prices over the next 20 yrs for Big Oil/NG suppliers. You're a fool if you think they won't buy everybody, politicians, media, ENGO's, even religious organizations & charities, to blockade the competition. Tax deductable expenditure, fully legal albeit sickeningly unethical, that nets $trillions in revenue.
In India it is not power generation but an abysmally faulty power distribution system that is responsible for its power problems.The power lost because of use of frayed conductors,wires strung on trees rather than poles,substandard and ill designed poles,ill designed and improperly planned transformers all contribute to a tremondous leakage of electricity which perhaps far exceeds the amount lost due to theft. Somehow while everyone is excited about projects that generate electricity there is a surprising apathy about improving the power distribution network.Huge amounts of money allocated for the purpose remain unspent.Without an efficent power distribution system improving power generation would be a futile effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjust make sure that every nuclear fuel rod isn't a mole of nuclear bombs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissecond that. what happened in chernobyl, three mile island and, most recently, japan have struck a chord very deep in the hearts of an unimaginable number of people. There are campaigns against India's nuclear programme going on here, and the Us, Germany and all others are seen by many as doing the right thing by holding back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalso, with what the privatised power companies would charge from us, we might as well sit in the dark. well, not the filthy rich maybe. but the middle class and lower middle class that makes most of us.
second that. what happened in chernobyl, three mile island and, most recently, japan have struck a chord very deep in the hearts of an unimaginable number of people. There are campaigns against India's nuclear programme going on here, and the Us, Germany and all others are seen by many as doing the right thing by holding back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalso, with what the privatised power companies would charge from us, we might as well sit in the dark. well, not the filthy rich maybe. but the middle class and lower middle class that makes most of us.