
Another power failure in India - gauravsc
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/liveblog/15291183.cms
======
kamaal
In short the reasons for failures are something like this.

a. No proper control systems/automation to detect and prevent
overload/tripping in case of excessive power consumption by any particular
state.

b. No back up/redundancy planning.

c. The grid architecture is badly designed, and leads to cascading failures of
sub grids.

d. Low quality equipment which fails often.

India's energy infrastructure is ancient. Its patch work for overgrown
villages(Read cities) totally incapable of meeting any sort of dependable
demands.

Add to this massive bureaucracy, license raj and corruption in purchase of
equipment in electricity boards. They buy low quality equipment which fails
often(because they are bribed to do so), since equipment fails often they buy
more.

The state of affairs is so bad, transformers fail and burst even if rains a
little heavily. What follows next is hours together of effort installing and
fixing new transformers. This is a common scenario in many areas in a city
like Bangalore. This is apart for hours together scale of unscheduled load
shedding which is frequent.

On top of this there are frequent protests and lobbying to stop the
construction of power plants(Hydel/Nuclear or otherwise).

And these are all state controlled monopolies. Recently I heard, Electricity
board in Bangalore is complaining against builders of gated communities(Flats
and Villas) and forcing them to use Govt supplied equipment. Because the
private builders are using better quality equipment which is exposing and is
making the Govt board look bad in front of them.

Any attempt to correct this system is met by massive political hostility. And
people proposing modern changes are perceived as anti-Indian culture
capitalist stooges being used by companies in the west to sell their
equipment.

~~~
intended
Would love to know why you say what you do. Do you work in the field?

I just switched over to a firm in the power generator sector in India, and the
Govt Contracts for power are beasts. Those are things which we make sure we go
over every page to fulfill.

They are also not that archaic - their backup/redundancy planning exists, at
least on paper. We've supplied it for various institutions/bodies. Plus the
Engineers in BHEL and the like are pretty smart chaps, sure they may be slow
but they are far from being daft. (Again! My experience, and mileage will
vary)

Not sure about how bad the architecture is, or how badly designed it is
either. From what I recall quality levels are a patchwork. As I assume are
equipment quality levels.

I'm not well versed in this, so I'm more interested in learning, whats going
on.

~~~
kamaal
You have to look at thing in comparison. We are made to convince that we are
the best, well that is hardly the case. Compare this with any western
metropolitan and you will see how ancient we are in terms of energy
infrastructure.

The problem really is corruption, bureaucracy and license raj in awarding
contracts and purchasing equipments. And this is not just the major/big
equipment. Electric wires used to supply power are so feeble, they snap if it
rains a little heavily.

>>Plus the Engineers in BHEL and the like are pretty smart chaps, sure they
may be slow but they are far from being daft. (Again! My experience, and
mileage will vary)

This is precisely the thinking we need to change. 'Lets give it to our people'
ideology. This needs to change. We need to accept that if somebody is better
than us, then they are better than us. Besides most modern electric contracts
these days are rightfully going to companies like ABB and Siemens(Eg:
Bangalore Metro). And they have done an awesome job, far better than BHEL can
ever do.

What we need currently is privatization with regulations and accountability.

Just look at how private real estate developer are transforming Bangalore.
Government agencies like BDA(Bangalore development authority) will never and
can never do that.

We need to bring that in every walk of life so that merit based competition
thrives and corruption/nepotism is weeded out.

~~~
intended
Funny you should mention Bangalore Metro...

From what I know about Siemens in that particular project is that they are
buying most of the pieces and then assembling it. As opposed to fabricating
parts and putting it together.

Anyway - I have studied for a while in the west, and I've seen both systems.

AFter reading your comment, I don't think you know where precisely they are
better than us. Or where privatization works or precisely how good certain
government organizations are.

The engineers who get taken, the civil guys in something like ONGC, they make
pretty good and help build great infrastructure.

The engineers keeping our grids alive, I've never once heard anyone call them
uninformed or unaware.

I don't think this grid failure had anything to do with "giving it to Indians"
that mentality died in the workplace in 1990. Our engineers who work here
actually make a good grid and good systems. Heck it hasn't collapsed in a long
long while.

I think the collapse has more to do with people drawing more due to subsidies
and political sops than anything else. And thats not something privatization
is going to fix directly.

Matter of fact, so far Govt contracts have been the more exacting contracts
from what I have come across, and the private ones except for the MNCs have
been the more lax.

Further - from what I can see, the government contracts for a lot of these
things are open and if you are in the country, you can bid for it. (Be you
Siemens or Kirloskar) And those contracts? like the BGLR Metro order? Thats
vetted and checked against by govt engineers.

The way the contracts are being set up in many places, end up favoring large
firms. And AFAIK MNCs aren't paying bribes.

So we already have privatization with regulations and accountability to an
extent.

You could say we need more and I won't disagree. We are moving towards that.

\------------

Unsaid when discussing "privatization" is that it's tough to work in India.
Competition is harsh and margins razor thin. I know that some companies would
rather sell in other places than this market for better profits with less
effort.

What I want to say is that you are painting a dark picture, but having more
first hand knowledge at the moment, the picture is a lot more grey, and
lighting up.

If you want to see how real estate developers fare on their own, you should
always remember the message of gurgaon. A beautiful example of private
enterprise - a great city with well developed plots. - And no common sewage
system.

~~~
pm90
Thank you for this informative comment. Although I mean no offence towards the
GP, Indians are prone to blame the govt./corruption etc and say that the
"whole system sucks". In that light, information from someone in the industry
is highly appreciated

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nsns
As far as I know, Indians are more prepared for such failures than most
people. Every (middle class) Indian house I know has batteries or a generator
because of the daily load shedding.

Such failures somewhat complicate the commendable struggles against new
nuclear plants and dams (e.g.,
[http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2803/stories/201102112803090...](http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2803/stories/20110211280309000.htm))

~~~
gauravsc
Even Indians are not used to such large scale load shedding, where almost half
of the country is without power.

------
intended
Well hopefully this will happen for a few more days, and that will galvanize
people enough to get someone to deal with the rampant power theft, and
terrible power gen vs demand ratio.

~~~
kamaal
Talking of power theft. Slums steal massive amounts of power without paying a
rupee.

Also same with street side functions, processions and religious events.

Everybody feels they have freedom to steal. No wonder corruption is so
difficult to eliminate in this country.

~~~
luser001
Wrt the conventional wisdom that "Slums steal massive amounts of power without
paying a rupee".

Frontline magazine did a study which showed that a huge amount of power theft
was occuring at industrial consumers.
<http://www.flonnet.com/fl1906/19060950.htm> (it's a little dry in the typical
Frontline style. I hope you will read it).

Also, you didn't mention businesses in places in Chandni Chowk, Lajpat Nagar
etc? Given the other "cost-cutting"^Wtax-evading measures they take, I would
feel very confident in assuming that they don't pay for most of their energy
use.

------
mjn
If Wikipedia isn't missing any, it looks like these are now the two largest
blackouts in history:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_outages#Largest>

------
lenkite
Let's face reality - we have a power crisis and political sops to greedy
states only exacerbate this. We were supposed to have several nuclear reactors
functional and giving power to regional grids by 2012.

Thanks to the 'green' brigade who live in a dreamland where India survives
only on Solar and Wind, there are several "public-interest" court petitions
stalling construction on one pretext or another. Local politicians were only
too happy to buy media attention and make things worse. To get around this, we
are forced to import higher and higher quantities of coal and oil. Yes..that
is _SO_ much 'greener'.

In fact several coal power plants are not even running due to coal shortage.
This year has been especially terrible due to high temperatures and a bad
monsoon leading to more power consumption.

It's a complete mess. And I don't have any optimism that things will improve.
We will continue stumbling along to the next crisis..that is if this one gets
solved.

~~~
luser001
AFAIK, it's not just the utopian "green brigade" as you think. The amount of
compensation that the govt. gives when forcibly acquiring land for nuclear
projects is pathetically low. Many of them may fighting because they think
that is the only way to get better compensation.

See e.g.,
[http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-19/india...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-19/india/29145859_1_compensation-
package-villages-lands) the units seem to be unreliable, but we're talking
around $3000 per family in compensation (938 hectares over 2335 families at
Rs400k/hectare and Rs50 per USD). LOL. I'd stall a project if I was going to
be uprooted, my livelihood (i.e., traditional fishing grounds destroyed) and I
was given a insultingly low $3k as compensation.

------
pm90
I'm appalled at the no. of comments that say "the govt. is useless/shit and
that the system is torn by corruption". Of course it is. More constructive
comments, please!

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pradeep89
What a shame ! Useless government !!! It affected ATMS, TRAINS , more than 30%
indian population affected by this outage crisis

~~~
gauravsc
This government is totally useless, ineffective, arrogant and insensitive.

------
mqzaidi
It started at midday and there are already such scenes, I wonder what will
happen during peak commute times.

Note that the first area to have power restored is NDMC, which houses top
politicians and bureaucrats.

~~~
gauravsc
The best part is that they have decided to promote the Power Minister Sushil
Shinde as the Home Minister, now all the terrorist will die rolling on the
floor laughing.

------
joshuahedlund
How many years ago did India not have 600 million people with electricity to
lose?

------
sirfried
Incredible India

