Darkness looms large over North India

George Iype in New Delhi

The new year has brought darkness to the Indian capital and large areas in the North.

Reeling under a massive electricity shortage of over 3,500 MW, the entire North India and the nearly 10 million Delhities suffer power cuts ranging from 2 to 10 hours.

While in the dusty townships of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, lights are off for days together, the frequent tripping of power transmission lines have almost halted industrial units in Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

But thanks to the Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking's care and concern for the country's political leaders and bureaucrats, uninterrupted power supply has been ensured in the VIP areas in central Delhi where the President, prime minister, all federal ministers and senior politicians live.

However, Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma, who faced an irate opposition in the state assembly on Monday, has promised to slash VIP power supply in order to light millions of homes that went without power in the past five days.

Delhi's peak power demand per day is 1,700 MW. While DESU generates 225 MW, Delhi gets 550 MW from the northern grid and the remaining from the Badarpur Thermal Power Station in Haryana. But in the past five days Delhi continues to blink under a shortfall of some 400 MW.

But experts believe Verma's short-term alternatives cannot save Delhi and other northern Indian states from the specter of darkness as the northern grid - which is the major power source to at least seven states - is unable to grapple with the huge demand-supply mismatch.

They blame the penny-wise pound-foolish approach of the National Thermal Power Corporation and the Power Grid Corporation for the constant tripping of the northern grid at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh.

The northern grid generates only 14,500 MW of electricity as against the demand of over 17,000 in the northern region stretching from Jammu and Kashmir to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi.

"The power situation became grim due to the callousness of the NTPC and the government's Central Electricity Authority," says T U Rajan, a Delhi based power consultant who advises foreign firms on the Indian power situation.

"NTPC is operating their units at Dadri on badly maintained equipment. It should have resorted to partial shutdowns and restored the health of the equipment," Rajan told Rediff On The Net.

NTPC officials admit poor maintenance is one of the root problems for the frequent blackouts due to their units. "Our equipment at Dadri fail due to heavy fog and air pollution. Many sensitive equipment have a thick layer of dust over them. While a partial shutdown is required to clean them, we are unable to do that due to huge shortage in our generating capacity," said a senior NTPC official.

Likewise, experts say, the PGC which operates the transmission lines, has failed to take preventive steps to save the high-voltage direct current lines from tripping between Dadri to the states' sub-stations.

But a senior official at the federal power ministry said the future of the power situation across the country looks grim because in the past five years new power plants have failed to emerge.

"The power demand in India has gone up by leaps and bounds, but many power projects have not taken off successfully due to many reasons," he told Rediff On The Net.

The reasons cited included many a cash-strapped state government's inability to invest in power projects, the Enron-like mess that many private sector power companies have involved in and the slow progress of major hydro-electric projects like Tehri, Sardar Sarovar, Ranganandi and Srisailam.

According to power ministry estimates, India would require 90,093 MW by 2000. Though at present the country requires 73,458 MW, currently it generates only 30,500 MW.