Conference Proceedings: Power on Demand by 2012

This chapter brings forward the background details, which inspired us to have the workshop Power on Demand by 2012. Ministry of Power, Government of India has dared to dream. They have a hallucination in this new millennium and hence have come up with a vision document named Blueprint of Power Sector Development, which elaborates the dream to have power for all by 2012 in India.

Power is the backbone of modern global society. It is a crucial ingredient for economic growth and improving the standard of life. Electricity consumption is practically synonymous with modern life in the industrialized world. Our communications, transport, food supplies, and most amenities of contemporary homes, offices and factories depend on a reliable supply of electrical power.

The growth rate of demand for power in developing countries is generally higher than that of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In India, the elasticity ratio was 3.06 in the first Plan and peaked at 5.11 during third plan and come down to 1.65 in the Eighties. Therefore, in order to support a rate of growth of GDP of around 7 percent per annum, the rate of growth of power supply needs to be over 10 percent annually. But given the budgetary support limitation, due to growing demands from other sectors, particularly social sector and the severe borrowing constraints, a new financing strategy was required. This had been recognised by the Government as reflected in the new policy enunciated in 1991, allowing private enterprise a larger role in the power sector.. This had been recognised by the Government as reflected in the new policy enunciated in 1991, allowing private enterprise a larger role in the power sector.

The achievement of increasing installed power capacity from 1362 MW to over 100,000 MW since independence and electrification of more than 500,000 villages is impressive in absolute terms. However it is a matter of grave concern that the annual per capita consumption of electricity in India, at about 350 kWh is among the lowest in the world. Further, people in a large number of villages have no access to electricity. The end users of electricity like households, farmers, commercial establishments, industries are confronted with frequent power cuts, erratic voltage supply and low and high supply frequency have added to the power woes of the consumer. These problems arise from:

Inadequate power generation capacity;
Lack of optimum utilisation of the existing generation capacity;
Inadequate inter- regional transmission links;
Inadequate and ageing sub- transmission and distribution network leading to power cuts and local failures/faults;
Large scale theft and skewed tariff structure;
Slow pace of rural electrification;
Inefficient use electricity by the end users
Lack of grid discipline

The Union Ministry of Power has developed appropriate strategies and a blueprint to address the above issues in a time bound manner. The outcome of these strategies hinges on their effective countrywide implementation.

The States have the greater share of generation and transmission assets and almost the entire distribution under their control. They would need to play to very vital role in effecting institutional and result oriented changes.