Half of India Without Electricity As Power Grid Crisis Deepens

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a massive power breakdown has hit India for a second day running, leaving more than half the country without power as the northern and eastern grids have both collapsed. The breakdown has hit a large swathe of the country including Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan states in the north, and West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in the east. Power cuts are a common occurrence in Indian cities because of a fundamental shortage of power and an aging grid. The chaos caused by such cuts has led to protests and unrest on the streets but the collapse of an entire grid is rare — the last time the northern grid failed was in 2001. India's demand for electricity has soared in recent years as its economy has grown but its power infrastructure has been unable to meet the growing needs. In the weeks leading up to the failure, extreme heat had caused power use to reach record levels in New Delhi and on July 30 a line feeding into the Agra-Bareilly transmission section, the 400-kV Bina-Gwalior line, tripped, triggering the collapse. The second grid collapse occurred on 31 July as the Northern, Eastern and North-Eastern power grids of India tripped/failed causing power blackout in 19 states across India. The crisis was allegedly triggered after four states — Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and UP — drew much more than their assigned share of power."

Re:Wind Electricity

[crazyjj]

Wind and solar are fine as supplements in areas where you have room for panels and turbines. But I don't see them being a big help in densely-packed areas like India and Japan. For those areas you would still need to build plants far from the city, and that still means you need decent infrastructure.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Power in developing countries...

[h4rr4r]

Coal is only cheapest because it can externalize its waste disposal cost. If the Nuclear power plants were allowed to just dump their waste into the air that would bring down costs quite a bit.

The costs are comparable if clean air and medical costs for those impacted have a value.

Re:Wind Electricity

[SJHillman]

I've also heard that warm air (caused by your body temp, for example) tends to create a very thin insulating layer on the surface of your skin. The movement of air breaks up the insulating layer, allowing more heat to escape.

Corruption in India

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The corruption in India (and Pakistan, China and Bangladesh etc) is different from the corruption in the western countries. In the west, corrupt officials do illegal things for bribes of money or power or women. In the East corrupt officials demand money to do their regular job for which they get paid salaries. Simple things like getting a driver's license or getting fitness certificate for your bus/truck, or getting a residency certificate to apply for a bank loan, or getting a legal heir certificate to probate a will, or to register a property deed, or police verification report to apply for passport or no objection certificate from the Urban Development Authority for something or the other, or from the water board for something else .... any thing you need to do, there are two things that are certain:

1. You will need certificates. No matter what you do. Anything you do must have an application, usually in triplicate, and it should be accompanied by certificates. Tons and tons of certificates.

2. All these certificates must be obtained by bribing some official or another.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Lumpy]

Yup even a paltry 100watt panel on every home with a syncing mini inverter would make a huge dent in loads. and they are not stuck with overzealous UA requirements so they can use the inexpensive China syncing inverters that are 250 watt max that gives the ability to expand to 2 100 watt panels per home.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell support is in Bangalore which was not affected.

And I have been in the building where they receives calls, the place has a generator the size of a large hotel lobby, so as long as the gas lasts, they can. They also have redundant phone lines, so even if one network operator goes down, they are in business

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the original poster, but I am originally from a third world country and currently living in a first world one.

This attitude that is frequently displayed by people from first world countries, to immediately compare their "awful" living conditions to real third world countries is downright insulting - you have no idea how good you have it.

You take too much for granted.

Not saying things can't be better, there is plenty of things that are wrong in first world countries, plenty of things that are getting worse. But don't for a moment think that the US is anything like a third world country in any respect.

Re:Wind Electricity

[petermgreen]

If an object is hotter than it's surroundings in still air a volume of air arround it will start to heat up reducing the rate of heat transfer. Similarlly if a wet object is in still air a volume of air arround it will increase in humidity reducing the rate of evaporation. Moving air means the air has moved away from the hot/moist object before it has a chance to increase in tempreature or humidity much.

In cool climates the temperature is lower than body temperature so both heat transfer and evaporation will be working to cool your body.

In a hot climate though the direct heat transfer will be warming the body and the only cooling from the wind will be through evaporation.

Re:Corruption in India

[CrimsonAvenger]

In the East corrupt officials demand money to do their regular job for which they get paid salaries. Simple things like getting a driver's license or getting fitness certificate for your bus/truck, or getting a residency certificate to apply for a bank loan, or getting a legal heir certificate to probate a will, or to register a property deed, or police verification report to apply for passport or no objection certificate from the Urban Development Authority for something or the other, or from the water board for something else .... any thing you need to do, there are two things that are certain:

1. You will need certificates. No matter what you do. Anything you do must have an application, usually in triplicate, and it should be accompanied by certificates. Tons and tons of certificates.

2. All these certificates must be obtained by bribing some official or another.

What you are describing here is NOT "corruption". It is "graft". Subtle difference, possibly, but significant, from a cultural perspective - some cultures have no problems with graft (it's assumed to be one of the perks of the job)....

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[sandytaru]

I can confirm that roof mounted solar water works, and works well. We installed a system a year ago back, and our power bill went down by a third and has stayed at that level pretty consistently. If full solar isn't an option due to cost, a solar water system is possibly in reach. Our system will have paid for itself by the end of 2014.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[hobarrera]

I used to work at SAP when we had a severe power outage here in Argentina. I don't quite know how, but even when the entire area had no power, they turned on the diesel generator, and we got back to work, having phone(voip actually) and internet fine.
I'm not sure if they have some premium line, or if the ISP just had lots of backup generators.

Welcome to the Party

[LordDfg]

I have a Generator that can power my computer and house and a decent UPS that can run my system without any issues. To reach this point I have been through hell. In Pakistan the power crisis has only gone worse each year. I can't remember the last day when the power didn't go out. Every day it goes out for 8 hours or more. It's literally a hell hole for online business. I have trained myself to work in harsh conditions in the past which included running the computer and keeping the fan off (40+C temperatures) and before that I would usually shutdown the PC before the power went out. I literally memorized the power schedule and I would constantly keep working and then powering off and then coming back to work. That routine was amazingly harsh; you were put under a lot of stress physically and emotionally. Now, even with this backup solution you still get pwned because the gas prices are high here and if you venture outside you will just roast yourself. In short, India is just facing a major blackout just now but Pakistan has been facing this for years now.