Hydro power offers Ways to power up India
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Hydro power offers Ways to power up India’s future
By Arun Nigavekar Sep 27 2011
Tags: Op-edFor emerging economies, or for that matter even for the stable and rich economies, progress is linked with enough supply of power. Today, hydropower, thermal power and nuclear power, in a mixed manner, are the major sources of energy globally. India has a power generation capacity of 135,006 mw at present, which is not sufficient for the second fastest growing economy in the world. Power shortages have been identified as a key infrastructure bottleneck.
Consider hydropower generation.
India is a peninsula containing so many rivers and water bodies. But, hydropower is mostly generated in south India because the Indo-Gangetic plain is a flat terrain, not very conducive for setting up the hydropower plants. In south India, it’s possible but rainfall in that region is seasonal and also rivers are non-perennial. The monsoons between June and September account for nearly 80 per cent of annual rainfall over the country and are vital for the economy, being the main source of water for agriculture and hydropower generation across the country.Nuclear power plants, said to be “the future of power” are good in some ways. But, there are various problems like non-availability of uranium, topography selection and environmental hazards, among others. If our plans for growth of nuclear power translate into action quickly because of the nation’s recent deals with nuclear energy rich nations like the US, UK, France and Russia, it would boost our power generation capacity.
Then, if we move our attention towards wind power, it is costly and seasonal winds also affect the performance in a huge manner. Solar power is a less developed option and has huge apparatus cost as well as cost of erection; also the success rate is very low. As of today, it is hydropower that is the major source of power generation. Hydropower projects based in south India account for 30 per cent or 11,400 mw of the country’s installed capacity of 38,000 mw of this power source. To make matters worse, of the country’s total installed capacity of 147,000 mw, only around 85,000 mw is operational at any given point of time. India’s track record in adding power generating capacity is poor: in the past five years the country has added 20,950 MW of capacity, against a target of 41,110 mw. The limited addition of new power producing capacity, fall in hydropower generation in south India and higher demand for electricity in summer have already resulted in a severe power shortage across the country. India plans to add 78,577 mw by 2012, but according to government’s own sources, it could miss this target by up to 60 per cent because of shortage of equipment and contractors, delays in technology alliances, lack of funds and natural calamities such as floods, among others.
The Indian electricity sector faces many other problems in trying to meet the ever-increasing demand-supply gap. Energy losses in India’s transmission and distribution sector exceed 30 per cent, which is one of the highest in the world. India’s power ministry estimates that about half of the electricity in the country is billed. The financial impact of technical and commercial losses has been estimated at 1.5 per cent of GDP. Upgrading out-of-date transmission and distribution systems coupled with the need to reduce electricity losses and theft is driving the deployment of smart grid technologies in India. The methods to address these concerns demand substantial investments in advanced metering to reduce AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses, in automation to measure and control the flow of power to/from consumers on a near real-time basis and in improvement of the system reliability and moving to a smart grid to manage loads, congestion and shortfall in an intelligent manner.
The other concern is about getting trained manpower for operating the smart grid technologies, systems and related software. Our electrical engineering programmes do not cover these new facets of power management. The power industry in India is expected to undergo a paradigm change, fuelled by legislative and regulatory activities. It would require power instrumentation engineers that would design and produce these new equipments.
The real challenge in the power sector in India lies in managing the upgrading of the transmission, distribution and metering sector efficiently and creating manpower to handle these challenges. In response to these challenges, it is heartening to note that the ministry of power has set up the India Smart Grid Forum as a public-private partnership, bringing in utilities, industry and academia.
Indeed in future, distribution and managing of power is going to be a big business; a real challenge for the private sector, which desires to be in power industry and academic institutions to completely overhaul the curriculum and delivery of education in electrical and instrumentation engineering.
It is estimated that the global market potential for smart grid equipment manufacturers and solution providers will be between $15 billion and $31 billion annually by 2014, with the value split among three main business segments — customer applications; advanced metering infrastructure/smart meters and grid applications. India can certainly take a lead in this domain as it would enrich the economy and create new job opportunities.
(The writer is a former chairman of UGC and former VC of University of Pune)
Hydro power offers Ways to power up India
http://www.archimedeshydroscrew.com/hydro-power-offers-ways-to-power-up-india/
