Indian Government Initiates ‘Power For All’ with an objective to provide 24×7 power to all by 2019
24×7 – Power for All – It’s a Joint Initiative of Government of India (GoI) and State Governments
The objective to provide 24×7 power available to all households, industry, commercial businesses, public needs, any other electricity consuming entity, and adequate power to agriculture farm holdings by FY 19.
Image source: Political Mirror
India is growing fast. Energy is central to achieving India’s development ambitions, to support an expanding economy, to bring electricity to those who remain without it, to fuel the demand for greater mobility, and to develop the infrastructure to meet the needs of what is soon expected to be the world’s most populous country. What happens in India will increasingly influence the global energy economy.
Image source: TOI
India, home to 18% of the world’s population, uses only 6% of the world’s primary energy. India’s energy consumption has almost doubled since 2000 and the potential for further rapid growth is enormous, as per World Energy Outlook.
Image credit: World Energy Outlook
Sixty-seven years after independence more than 30% of Indians still live without reliable access to grid electricity. And a majority of those who do have grid access suffer, on average, 5-6 hours of daily power disruption, making costly inverter-battery power backup systems commonplace.
In an effort to meet our energy needs Mr. Goyal has aggressively pushed to secure fuel (coal and gas) for the thermal plants, restructured the bureaucratic process making it open and efficient, and, most visibly, set ambitious solar and other renewable targets — however, more needs to be done.
If we go by the recent announcement of a union minister, power cuts may soon become a thing of the past in India. Since taking over office, the central government, under the aegis of Mr. Piyush Goyal, Minister for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy, has repeatedly stated its goal of providing a 24-hour power supply across the country. Mr. Goyal has laid out a detailed plan to accomplish this critical and difficult goal, the effects of which we are seeing today.
The power sector is a critical infrastructure element required for the smooth functioning of the economy. An efficient, resilient and financially healthy power sector is essential for growth and poverty reduction. The availability of reliable, quality and affordable power helps in the rapid agriculture, industrial, and overall economic development of India.
Electricity consumption is one of the most important indices that decide the development level of a nation. The per capita consumption of electricity in FY 2012-13 was 917 units, which is around 20% of that in China or 5% of the level in the USA, as reported by the Power Ministry.
This initiative also aims to strengthen the Transmission and Distribution network to cater to the expected growth in demand of existing as well as forthcoming consumers. Introduce modern technologies to monitor reliable supply like sub-station automation, providing adequate communication infrastructure, GIS, Reliability, Centralised Network Analysis, and Planning tools, SAP driven ERP systems, DMS (Distribution Management Systems), OMS (Outage Management System), etc, reported by Power Ministry.
Ministry of Power, India started the joint initiative with 16 states for providing power for all. Joint initiative plans have been arrived at by each of the states.
For a country that is quite familiar with the words like ‘power cut’, ‘power shortage’, ‘power outage’ etc, a talk of 24×7 all India electrification sounds too good to be true. Nevertheless, let us sincerely hope 24×7 power becomes a reality in India.
