Securing the Energy Future for India

[chanana.ak@nic.in]

How to achieve Universal Access to Electric Power and LPG?

[pankajrahate@yahoo.com]

India became example for the whole world when it became fastest growing telecom market in the world. Not only call-prices are lowest in the world but infrastructure is deep into rural areas.

Is it possible to model universal-access to electricity/LPG on same concept ?
Bring in lots of competition and open up the market to everyone.

Allow small/medium/big players to build village/town level distribution and ability to link with national grid.

[patel.tapans@yahoo.co.in]

Hi,

Access to electricity and LPG have been very crucial needs for the citizens. Followings are a few suggestions in this regard:
• Every primary health centre and primary school in every village must be electrified by Solar Power. This will give a boost to village level economic activities like:
o Entrepreneurship at village level
o Employment
o Access to electricity for fundamental requirements of health and education
o Reduce drop out rate at primary school level
o Reduce infant mortality rate
o Access to vaccines for curable diseases
• Government should target to remove kerosene subsidy at the earliest (keeping aside vote bank), and must discourage use of it. Jakarta followed a very good model on “The Zero Kero Program”, where they intend to convert all kerosene users to LPG users by 2012. They give them 3 kg LPG cylinder at subsidized rate.
• Government must develop infrastructure to make LPG available to villages, and in that OMCs (HPCL, BPCL, OICL, etc.) can play very important role.

Regards,

Tapan Patel

[aditya.s.d@gmail.com]

When we Universal access to electric power, what we primarily say here is to provide these to the deprived people, who mainly live in rural areas.

Electric Power:
Thee are two types of places - Grid connected and Out of Grid.

Grid Connected:- Problem here is mainly shortage of power supply. Which happens in India mainly due to shortage of production and high losses in transmission.

a. Shortage of Production: Given the fact that govt is having trouble allocating coal reserves to new and up coming thermal power plants, I don't feel we can rely good supply of coal for long term ( which anyways we cannot ). Hence I feel small / medium biomass power plants in decentralized set up would be one way to go ahead. The raw material could be primarily the agricultural waste. This would enable the following:

1. Consumption of rural agri waste for minimal amount would add to their income
2. Generate local employment opportunities for local youth
3. Also if we can make policy that the first consumer these decentralized power generated should be the people in the district, then the remaining power to be distributed outside district. This concept can have many adv : less stress on thermal plants, less transmission loss, immediate effect of the plants on lives of people of the surrounding area.


b. High Transmission losses: This is purely technical issues which i feel can be achieved by better technology.

Out of grid places:

Initially, the govt should ensure to tap the power to supply outside area.

To supply in local area this can be done two ways:

1. Power generating to be given incentives and benefit to set up there distribution network in local area as approved by the state electricity boards. OR May they can supply and collect the revenue which can be kept by them. Rates to be decide by electricity board and govt to just collect regular taxes.

2. Electricity boards to set up the network in stipulated time as decided at agreement.

Here we need to ensure adequate supply of biomass for all the power plants to run successfully, hence an initial survey has to conducted to identify the available agri waste and the amount power that can be generated and the give permission only to generate power plant same amount of generating capacity. Else it would result loss in investment.

This is regarding the biomass power plants which can be decentralized at village level. We should aggressively look at various opportunities to utilise waste matter generated in various municipal corporation / industrial areas / colonies etc to help us achieve the objective universal access to electric power.

Thanks and Regards,
Aditya Deshpande

[rohitsknn@gmail.com]

Instead of using high prices on diesel used for automobiles there could be another strategy. Diesel which is used a lot for generating power could be taxed higher (or incidentally tax the Power Generators highly). And the use of solar power could be encouraged. In cases of road side illumination advertisements, glass enclosed buildings (Buildings that use glass extensively), Mobile towers, cold chain storages in rural india (which will come up in the future) and raw houses (aka bunglows especially in the rooftops). It could be made mandatory to have solar power used in those areas. In those Private Sector glass enclosed Buildings and theatres there could be a penalty levied since these glass buildings tend to use up a lot of electricity when compared to normal Buildings and encourage the use of solar energy. Besides In govt offices , secretariats ,legislative assemblies residences of government officers, Government educational institutions there could be solar power used on a larger scale and thus relieve the burden on conventional electric supplies. In India which is power deficient and with lots of sunshine there could be extensive use of solar energy. Solar energy could also be encouraged in military institutions that are located far away from conventional Energy supply thus providing them with reliable power source at hand. Also for proposed back end infrastructure for retail there could be solar power advised. For metro railways/ airports there could be solar energy encouraged for many off grid applications viz charging laptops or mobiles. Also incentives could be made available to power distributors to use the rooftops for harnessing solar energy for their daily use. In rural area hospitals where there is constant power cuts solar energy could be embraced in a big way to prevent any power shortage and this could be included in the development of medical facilities in the Government Expenditure if need be. Also Geographically inaccessible areas viz north east various alternate sources of energy could be promoted. Besides many power distributors spend a lot of money in printing and delivering the electric bills. If it is possible they could also be given the option to mail these bills to the consumers on their email id. This woud cause savings to the power companies that could also be passed on to the customers (to encourage them to take it up). There could also be reminders send to the customers cellphone as smses intimating them of their electricity dues. Renewable energy quota could also be fixed for SEZs while they are being developed or constructed. Green architecture could also be implemented in the government or the private sector by passing suitable legislations so that power could also be saved. (which might be otherwise lost in cooling the building structure, or even providing suitable lighting.) Film Industries that tend to consume a lot of power could also be encouraged/motivated to increase their use of renewable and to go in for rainwater harvesting and such other facilities at their studios. Since expecting the common man to take the initiative for renewable is tough the focus must be on commercial enterprises who are able enough to afford use of renewable energy. Only such a strategy might bear fruits. Also there could be MGREGA used for skilled labour work. Use it to improve the energy efficiency and employ the skilled labour to do so. There could also be energy efficiency stimulus granted for small businesses. Improving energy efficiency is also very vital as costs are small and the benefits quick. There could also be tax placed on energy guzzling devices and rebates offered on energy efficient devices (if needed). Proper planning needs to be done in order to egt the optimum use of solar energy. Eg coal powered plants must nt be located near the solar panels as the dust could reduce the amount of solar energy obtained and thus reduce the effectiveness of the panels as seen in germany.
Rohit Sunny