STORY OF AN EMERGING 'POWER'

This is one story no patriotic Indian would like to hear. Thanks to our media, especially the print media, many of us now know where we are going wrong in bringing power to the consumer.

The problem is not simple and has many facets and interrelationships. In a nutshell, we did not have enough power for our needs as a nation. This meant less productivity, less comfort and inevitably an inequitable distribution of power due to revenue realisation factors. But this was the old story.

The new story which has emerged is that huge and adequate generation capacity was created to meet the projected demand, which is now lying mostly idle due to two main reasons. The first reason is that the states don't want to purchase power as they are not presently capable of stopping power theft for whatever reasons.This means that the cost of power purchase is greater than the selling price.This difference is cumulatively so huge that significant public money has been used to write-off the losses. The second reason is even more interesting. The Government cleared creation of generating capacity but is unable to provide fuel linkage to power producers. And it so happens that enough indigenous fuel is available but controlled by either Govt monopoly as in case of coal or by a few private players who are least interested in providing it at legislated prices, as in case of gas. This situation is not likely to unravel soon inspite of recent corrective policy measures.

If we dig deeper, we discover that power is only a subset of energy. And the overall energy sector is beset with woes, many of which are of our own making. This is not surprising since we don't have a single common energy ministry to start with - instead we have Coal, Power, New &Renewable Energy and Petroleum ministries. There could still be some co-ordination if at the legislative level there were a departmental Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy. Unfortunately for India, even this is not so.

The story of this emerging power called India is not a lack of resources but a lack of accountability, planning and execution at multiple levels. With this as background, the ideal contemporary practice identified to improve our power resource utilisation is an approach called the Microgrid. It is not a product but a method, an arrangement or even a philosophy of optimally  utilising available generation resources, including renewable generators, on prioritized loads. Importantly it places a degree of control in the hands of the user community. In our context it holds promise to provide energy access in remotest areas as well as energy assurance. With integration of renewable energy generators, the full potential of a microgrid is exploited leading to significant savings in fossil fuel consumption.

I will cover the principle of Microgrids in my next post. It is adequate to say that having examined the concept, it took no time for me to get converted to an ardent follower of the Microgrid philosophy. It delivers real tangible results immediately. At many places we already have it but we may not be calling it that. If Gandhiji were alive today, he would have gladly agreed that it gives 'swaraj' to the user community. Hopefully our leadership will eventually hear of this and understand it's significance Strength Five.