

India Blackout Leaves 300 Million Without Power - ghshephard
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/07/30/world/asia/30reuters-india-blackout.html?hp

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ghshephard
What's interesting to me, is that this AP report [http://news.yahoo.com/major-
power-outage-hits-northern-india...](http://news.yahoo.com/major-power-outage-
hits-northern-indian-cities-031800371--finance.html) claims that " Shivpal
Singh Yadav, the power minister in the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 200
million people, said that while demand during peak hours hits 11,000
megawatts, the state can only provide 9,000 megawatts."

In comparison, California, which is known for both having marginal capacity,
and being (relatively) low-user of electricity per capita (because of the mild
climate) - has a population of around 38 million, and, according to CalIso,
about 41,000 megawatts of generation capacity available (not all of it in
California, mind you) - <http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html>

~~~
cmadan
1\. Air conditioning isn't omnipresent, even in office buildings. 2\. Even if
it is present, central air conditioning is rare. 3\. Even if it is present,
unless it is really, really scorching heat most won't turn on their ACs to
save on electricity. A family of four will bunk up in a single AC room to
sleep even if they have 3 rooms in their house.

------
gingerjoos
> "Blackouts lasting up to eight hours a day are frequent in much of the
> country"

This particular blackout is only marginally worse than the situation the
common Indian is already in. The situation is so bad that blackouts are a part
and parcel of normal life in India. The situation does vary a lot over the
country - some of the more fortunate parts enjoy an average of 23 hours of
power a day. Some places have it really bad with "cuts" of 10 - 15 hrs a day
not uncommon.

Power generation is not enough to satisfy the demand. This isn't because of
the lack of power plants alone. The existing power plants are mismanaged and
often produce less power than they are designed for because of faulty
components. New power plants often get stuck with political problems.

