The Hindu Business Line : <I>Energy planning for India</I>

The seemingly unending debate on India's nuclear deal with the US has brought into sharp relief India's current energy profile and its implications for the future.

Even going by the most optimistic projections in terms of investment, procurement and pace of construction, the nuclear component of the total power availability in 2050 will be only around 10 per cent of the planned total installed capacity of 200,000 MWs or so; this percentage too will be further reduced if the expectations of efficient follow-up action on the deal do not materialise, as is likely to be the case. For, in energy management, comprising construction, generation, transmission and distribution, slippages are more common than in any other sector due to long gestation periods, the need for heavy resource mobilisation and orchestration of complex activities against numerous imponderables.

Unbalanced mix

Energy planning needs to be holistic without attention being confined to the glamorous big projects. There are immense benefits to be derived from the improvement of the functioning of the existing power stations and raising their plant load factor (PLF), plugging of transmission and distribution (T&D) losses, proper maintenance of pumpsets and industrial machinery to reduce wastage or excessive use of power and adoption of vigorous measures for conservation.

For instance, the overall PLF in India of about 69 per cent, can easily be raised by another 20 per cent by competent management. Likewise, the T&D loss of 34 per cent can be halved, if not brought down to 7 per cent as in China. On both these counts, assuming the official figures to be true (there are independent studies making out that the actual figures may be far worse), if only minimum performance parameters are enforced, the nation can get from out of the present 120,000 MWs of installed capacity the equivalent of an extra 40,000MWs of power without investing a single rupee.

Because of poor maintenance of pumpsets and industrial equipment, energy consumption per unit of GDP, is perhaps the highest in India compared to other developed and developing countries (3.7 times that of Japan, 1.55 times that of the United States, 1.47 times that of Asia and 1.5 times that of the world average.) Binging it down to world average will also add about 6000 MWs to the kitty without any extra expense.

Dangerous tilt

These considerations apart, the mix of different sources of power continues to be loaded disproportionately in favour of the conventional thermal generation from coal and oil, accounting for 88 per cent. Natural gas, hydro, nuclear and non-conventional and renewable sources constitute the balance. This is a dangerous tilt that needs to be corrected.

At the present rate of utilisation (with nearly 62 percent of power generation being coal fired and 70 percent of the coal produced every year used for thermal generation), reserves of usable grade of coal may not extend beyond the middle of the next century. The situation regarding gas and oil may not be so dire, but still they are also subject to rapid depletion, especially if power generation has to keep pace with the rising demand for domestic and commercial energy for a population of two billion or more at a modest 500 kw per capita and GDP growth rate of an imperative minimum of 10 per cent.

Hydro and renewable sources thus emerge as areas of topmost priority. The North-Eastern States alone are said to hold the prospect of 60,000 MWs of hydropower, while the estimated potential of renewable sources is 6000 MWs. Energy planning should laser-like focus on these avenues to get the most out of them within the shortest time-frame possible.

B. S. RAGHAVAN