It is a paradox that India, which is the fifth largest producer of
electricity at approximately 2,12,000 MW, is also the lowest per capita consumer
of electricity at 704 units as compared with 13616 units in the United States
of America, a world average of 2752 units, with even China having a per capita
consumption of 2328 units. There is obviously a total mismatch between the size
of our population and the quantum of power generated by us. Of the power
generated, a whopping 66.91 percent is accounted for by thermal power. The fuel
largely used for thermal power is coal, with coal based generation accounting
for 57.42 percent. Hydro power, which is clean and relatively cheap, accounts
for 18.61 percent of production, nuclear for 2.25 percent and renewable sources
such as wind, biomass, bagasse cogeneration accounting for 12.20 percent of the
total power generation. Thus, more than two-third of power generation in India
is based on fuels which are polluting and create a large carbon footprint.
It has been officially stated that for India to have even a
reasonable availability of power by the end of the year 2013, we should
increase our power generation from 2.12 lakh MW to at least 2.50 lakh MW, with
an eight to nine percent growth of generation per annum, which leads to the
level of 10 lakh MW of power by 2050. That amounts to a terawatt of power. In
the twelfth plan, the proposal is that 88000 MW of additional power be
generated which, taking into account increased demand, would still not close
the gap between power availability and power demand which, at present stands at
11.6 percent, rising to 15 percent during peak load.
In the matter of generation, what are the options available to us?
It is planned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission to add 22,000
MW of power through solar sources by 2022. Solar radiation is high throughout
India and, therefore, we should be able to expand the programme substantially,
but for one factor. Conversion of solar energy into electricity has a very low
efficiency factor, hovering around 20 percent. To take the analogy of railway
traction, the steam engine had a conversion factor of about 30 percent, which rose
to about 60 percent with diesel electric traction. With all electric traction
this goes up to between 75 and 80 percent. In a process of power generation in
which the efficiency of conversion is only about 20 percent, can any generation
infrastructure with such a low plant load factor be a truly effective
instrument of delivering power on a national scale? Disaggregated generation
and use of solar power directed at the household or a small community seems to
be perfectly in order. Massive production of solar power to feed the grid is a
completely different proposition. I state this not as an argument against solar
power, but as a caution about whether conversion of solar energy into electric
power is necessarily the best and most economical solution to our power
requirements.
Thermal power, even with all the devices such as electrostatic
precipitators, filter systems which capture particulate matter and even systems
of carbon recovery only partially deals with the problem. Apart from its carbon
footprint, a coal based thermal power station is prodigal in its use of cooling
water and the fly ash generated by such a power plant has created waste
management problems on a gigantic scale. Considering the preponderance of
thermal generation, regardless of environmental issues, one does not see a
reduction in the role of thermal generation in the foreseeable future and we
have to try and reduce the negative factors.
Hydro power is cheap, nonpolluting and should be a major source of
energy in a country where it is the hills and mountains in which our rivers,
both Himalayan and Peninsular, rise, with steep gradients in the early part of
their courses as they plunge towards plains. There is an almost unlimited
source of hydel power available to us, but there are major problems associated.
Had the present day environment activists existed then, the Gersoppa and Jog
falls would never have been used for hydel generation, nor would Jogindernagar
have existed. The problem with hydel generation is that one has to create a barrier
across a river, such as the Bhakra Dam, both impounding water and creating a
vertical drop which would enable hydel generation through turbines driven by
the rushing waters. Environmental activists, including Sunderlal Bahuguna, are
totally opposed to any dams. Their arguments are based on the assertion that
there is lack of safety because of seismic activity in fragile mountain areas,
the acquisition of land involved in creating a lake, the felling of trees in
the basin of the lake and interference with the course of flow of our mountain
and hill rivers. The environmental lobby has been so powerful that the second
phase of Maneri-Bhali on the Bhagirathi River has been scrapped. Virtually
every single dam is opposed and, therefore, hydel generation has come under
severe threat in India. Common sense demands that a balance should be struck
between hydel generation and environmental issues because both are important,
but the positions taken are so extreme that it is almost impossible to find a
via media.
One single example illustrates this point. The Narmada, which
arises at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh, flows for more than 85 percent of its
length in Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh is not only the upper riparian – it is
also the major user or, rather, should be the major user of Narmada water. The
Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has opposed projects on the Narmada tooth and
nail. The Gujarat Government, on the other hand, where the largest dam on the
Narmada, Sardar Sarovar, is located has made the Narmada waters an article of
faith. The Supreme Court and the State High Courts have sometimes been
facilitators but more often obstructionists. The Narmada is supposed to have 29
major, 450 medium and 3000 minor projects on it and its tributaries. Most of
the projects are stalled, many of them after hundreds of crores of rupees have
been spent. Sardar Sarovar is the only one which has been completed and
benefits of it are flowing throughout Gujarat, with a major share of power
coming to Madhya Pradesh. What some people choose not to believe is that the
Narmada can be a major source of hydel generation and Sardar Sarovar alone
generates 1400 MW of clean power Omkareshwar and Maheshwar should double this,
but thanks to NBA, the projects are making very slow headway. Without going
into the merits of the agitation, one can safely say it is a symbol of how a
major source of generation of clean power has been stymied.
India has set itself a target of generating 20 percent of energy
from renewable sources by 2017. Can we achieve this? Not at the present pace.
For example, in the matter of grid interactive renewable power, the target for
2011-12 for wind power was 2400 MW. We have achieved during this period
generation of 833 MW, that is, approximately 35 percent of the target. In the
case of micro hydel projects, as against a modest target of 350 MW, India has
achieved only 111.3 MW, which comes to 31.8 percent of the target. In the case
of solar power, only 2.5 percent of the target has been achieved. Gujarat and
now Madhya Pradesh are striving to push solar energy, but how soon the results
would be achieved remains to be seen.
That brings us to nuclear energy as a major source of power
generation. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh even put his government at risk in
order to push a treaty with the United States of America which would enable
India to move out of the pariah category in the nuclear world and be accepted
as a global partner in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. With many ‘ifs’ and
‘buts’, the treaty went through, with the Prime Minister arguing that if India
were to become energy sufficient and through a clean source of generation, we
had no option but nuclear power. The entire nuclear power generation programme
is based on the premise that it is the cleanest form of energy because there
are no emissions, nuclear power stations do not add gaseous or particulate
matter to the atmosphere, there is no carbon generation and there are no
mountains of fly ash such as one finds in a coal based thermal power station.
The only danger is a Chernobyl type explosion which released radioactive
material, or a Three-Mile Island type of melt down which, fortunately, was
contained. Then, of course, one had Fukushima in which the nuclear power
station was wrecked by a tsunami and it is only the heroic sacrifices by
dedicated Japanese engineers which prevented this mishap from being converted
into a disaster which would have devastated Japan.
In India, new nuclear plants include the one which is in the
process of becoming operational in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and two which are
in an advanced stage of planning. These include Jaitapur in Maharashtra and a
proposed plant in the Mandla District of Madhya Pradesh. Activists and even a
section of scientists are strongly opposed to these plants on account of
safety. In some ways, the Fukushima disaster has triggered grave doubts about
nuclear power plants located near the coast because it is feared that a tsunami
can overtake them, leading to devastating results. There have been large scale
and continuing protests Against Kudankulam and Jaitapur. The Prime Minister
and the entire nuclear science establishments have no such doubts. Their way to
reassure the people about the safety of these power plants is to virtually
guarantee that neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima can ever be repeated in India.
Those who are opposed these plants refuse to buy the government’s arguments,
not only because they question the scientific basis of certifying the plants to
be safe, but also on account of very little credibility remaining with
government as one financial scandal after another hits India. Neil Armstrong,
the first man on the moon, was asked on his return what passed through his mind
as he blasted into space. His reply was, “The first thought I had was that every
single part of the moon rocket had been supplied by the lowest tenderer”. Even
in the United States, doubts have be expressed about quality and with our
penchant for cutting corners when tendering and then trying to recoup any loss
by substandard work, one certainly shares some sympathy for those who question
safety guarantees. Nevertheless, the government has argued vehemently that
India has no option but to adopt nuclear power generation as a major source of
energy in the years to come.
The whole debate centres around the absolutely unavoidable need to
increase our generation capacity if India is to modernise. If power is viewed
as a commodity, then as in the case of all commodities, there is both a demand
and supply of the commodity. Our present approach to electricity is focused
only on supply because it is taken as given that demand will ride a rising
curve and that if India is to modernize, demand must be made to rise very
sharply. That scenario leaves us with no option other than increasing our
generation capacity. Depending on finite resources, there is bound to come a
time when we cannot increase power supply and then we would run into a massive
problem of a demand driven economy being brought to a halt because the supply
side has failed.
Is electricity necessarily a commodity? Is it not a convenience?
Before power traction came on the scene, travel was a function of the human
muscle, animal power, water power and wind power which moved sailing ships.
Many things which we take for granted today were not available, but there was
an ecological equilibrium the value of which we have never taken into account.
We certainly cannot revert to the pre-automobile engine era and that this
convenience, electricity, has become more than a convenience, more than a
commodity because it has become a vital necessity. It is, therefore, necessary
to accept that India needs electrical power for its electronic application.
Once this is established, then the question arises from where will it obtain
this power? Unfortunately, the country not really seriously looked at the
demand side. Electricity is a prime mover, which is defined by the Chambers
Twenty-first Dictionary as “the force that is most effective in setting
something in motion”. That means that the more cumbersome, more inefficient a
thing which is to be set in motion is, it will require a much larger quantity
of the prime mover, in this case electricity. Traction motors largely use
electricity as the prime mover. Let us take the case of a ceiling fan whose
motor uses between 60 and 100 watts of power. If the motor were to be made so
efficient that it consumes only 10 watts, we would have a 600 percent saving of
power on a ceiling fan. Multiply this by crores of ceiling fans in use in a hot
tropical country and the mind cannot even grasp how much power would be saved
by this one improvement. Take every other motor, whether it be the traction
motors of a railway train, the motors which drive heavy machinery in an
industry, the motors which drive pumps which lift water for irrigation and one
would find that by substantially improving the conversion factor of power to
motion one could probably make do with about half the power we generate today.
We could then concentrate on making our power stations more efficient, increase
the plant load factor to almost a ratio of 1:1 and also in the process reduce
pollution from these power plants to an acceptable level. It is only after this
new equilibrium is established that we should think of more forms of application
of electricity and, therefore, additional power generation.
I am not a scientist but have seen how Japanese scientists took the
old valve radio set, transferred the circuitry to a button size transistor and
gave us a radio set about the size of a pack of playing cards and transformed
the entire information technology scene. Today semi conductors, the micro chip,
the integrated circuit allow all sorts of equipment to function on a 1.5 volt
battery and have eliminated the need for continuous mains supply to these
appliances. I have suggested to the Indian Institutes of Technology that they
should have a very strong research programme which looks at power demand and
then come up with solutions which reduce demand as suggested above. The
research would not be glamorous because it will deal with such mundane items as
submersible pumps for lifting water from a tube well. It will not drive a
Ferrari or a Lamborghini. It will be used by common cultivators, but such
research would transform the entire power scenario in India and the world. Will
any of our institutes of technology take up the challenge? My humble submission
is that the route to the Nobel Prize does not necessarily lie in fundamental
research. Applied research which takes electricity and makes it a truly thrifty
servant of man can also lead to a Nobel Prize.
What is stated above is only a commonsense approach and one wonders
why neither activists, nor scientists, nor the technologists are pushing it. A
standard argument is that research which leads to efficiency of virtually every
appliance which uses electric power would be very expensive and would push the
cost of the commodity beyond ordinary levels of affordability. Perhaps this is
true, but only so far as the prototype is concerned. Replication of a prototype
does not call for cost to be incurred on research and when the prototype is
tested, proved and found to be acceptable, its mass production would bring the
unit cost down to not more than what the present appliance costs. Look how
expensive were the original cumbersome, slow and clumsy computers. Refining,
fine-tuning and mass production have brought the computer within the reach of
every common man. This is true of mobile telephony. Why should it fail in the
massively wide spectrum of electrical and electronic goods which have now
become a part of our daily life? Industry, government, the scientific
establishment and our Institutes of Technology must come together with a very
specific and determined programme to make the use of electrical energy so
efficient that a little bit goes a long way. There can be no tokenism in this
programme because if India is to survive as an ecologically and environmentally
healthy, modern nation in which power is harnessed for man’s needs and there is
enough power for everyone, then efficiency of everything which needs power to
operate has to be central to our philosophy of use of power. Whether we put a
man on the moon or not is not very relevant. Whether we can make one megawatt
of power perform the same function as a hundred megawatts of power is vital to
our survival. Will our scientific and technological establishment respond
favourably?
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