Power Problems !

Last night was agonizing. On the one hand, we have been yearning for the rains so that we can get respite from the sweltering heat. But when it finally rained, cats and dogs, accompanied by lightning and thunderstorms for hours together, it still was uncomfortable. The reason? No power. Though there was a temporary relief from the heat, no power throughout the night made sure that the relief was only short lived.

I had thought that our power problems were over. I can vividly remember my school days, when I and my brother used to sit around a candle, to do our homework or study. Those days, power cuts and load shedding was a regular practice. Every day, the number of hours with power almost always equaled the number of hours without. Slowly with the advent of technology, the candle was replaced by an Emergency Lamp, and then eventually by a Battery Invertor, But all of these have their inherent limitations. I am sure this has been the story with every middle class family in semi urban and rural India.

20 years hence, if today, we do not have the technology to safeguard our power generation and transmission systems against heavy rains, lightning and thunder, what have we achieved? We are living in the 21^st century. We talk about this being an Asian century.

I was reading somewhere, that out of every hundred units of power that is generated, 10 units are lost during transmission (apparently due to poor technology), 20 more units are supplied to farmers either free of cost or at a heavily subsidized rate (thanks to our politicians’ pre election promises) and 30 units gets stolen by illegal means. That leaves only 40 units for normal consumption. If this doesn’t lead us to shortage of power, where does it lead us to?

What is the solution? Well, there is nothing which can be done to stop the politicians from making promises and standing by them. But we certainly can tackle the other two problems. Transmission losses can be minimized by adopting better technology and thefts can be stopped by having strict regulations and enforcing them effectively. If capital is a matter of worry, privatization is the way out. Some cities in India have private companies handling the distribution of power, and people in some of such cities have never ever heard of a power cut in the last two decades or so. Even if there is, it’s just a matter of a few minutes. Open up the sector and there will definitely be a good number of takers for the same.