Arvinder Bali
In the light of rising energy cost and depleting energy resources, the efficient use of energy is continually gaining importance. The Govt has taken many initiatives in the recent past for improving the power efficiency through reforms like RAPDRP and Demand Side Management and to some extent India is able to move up the energy efficiency Ladder resulting in an increase of 8-10 percent net energy over the previous year. As per the latest reports, the total energy available on Net Ex bus is measured as 141,160 MW against the installed capacity of 2,75,000 MW .
As the power is transmitted over long distances at EHV and HV levels and distributed at 11KV/3.3 KV, there is a definite amount of loss associated with power transmission due to inherent in a system. The standard technical loss is around 15-20 percent constituting no load and variable load losses. But due to ageing transmission and distribution infra structure, the T&D losses in many states is ranging from 35 percent to 50 percent accounting to more than 30 GW of generating power. The current year loss from the Dicoms is reported to be 4.73 lakh crore rupees. . The Government is trying to address these issues by embarking on PAT schemes and Smart Grid initiative for the industries and electrical grid to use power smartly so as to wipe out all current losses by 2019.
Smart Grid also known as intelligent Grid is a combination of Smart Meters, Digital equipments, communication technology and application software that can help to track real time information on power quality, analyze power conditions, study historical trends and provide stepwise information to study the factors contributing to losses. Currently, the Smart Grid solutions are being implemented for 16 states (Assam, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pardesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Puduchery, Telangana, Tripura and West Bengal) covering 5000 to 35,000 consumers both in category of domestic and industrial consumers with an objective to transfer and manage power reliably and economically during peak loads.
In the recent years, the power requirement in our State has risen substantially crossing 17500 Million units. As per the reports, power deficit in the State is estimated to be 22-24 percent. The main reasons for power shortage is the transmission and distribution losses exceeding 60 percent. There are more than 50 percent unmetered connection in the State those needs to be metered to reduce pilferage. Furthermore, for our daily Energy needs, we are heavily dependent on the Central Government agencies for importing power, leading to a huge financial burden on the State. In the current fiscal year, the expense on power purchase (till Sep) is estimated to be more than 2500 crore, forcing administration to shell out more than 30,000 crore of our money on power purchase in the last ten years. So, the need of the hour is to deploy new cost effective alternative renewable energy technologies to increase the power generation from the current 2830 MW to the sufficient mark so as to meet the fundamental requirement of power for all.
Our State has a vast potential to produce solar power. It is one of the cleanest and most abundant energy sources that can play a very important role in strengthening the energy sector in J&K. Solar lights can be provided to the people in the far-flung hilly area. The State Govt must encourage private players to set up Solar thermal projects to make State self reliant in the power. This also falls in line with Government target to increase the Solar Power from current 20 GW to nine times the solar energy 175 GW to become the largest green energy producers by 2022. A target based generation Solar Power plan can really reshape the energy landscape of our State. We can plan to develop solar power for airports, just in congruence with Cochin Airport, where continuous power supply is available through Solar Power, producing 48000 units in a day. The 12 MW plant at Cochin airport can provide 50,000 units in a day to cover electricity needs that can cut at least 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emission equivalent to planting 3 million trees.
Solar power has big potential to transform the way we can get energy. Under The current scenario, the biggest impact of Solar Energy will be providing clean energy by reducing green house gas for sustainable future of our Planet. The potential of Solar energy is best harnessed by two Swiss pilots who flew Solar impulse-2 (solar aircraft) from Abu Dhabi to Muscat to India in Ahmedabad followed by Varanasi to mountainous areas in China, Japan and to Hawaii covering distance of 7,212 Km@ speed of 216 km/hr with unrefueled journey. Solar impulse is powered by Sun with 17,000 Solar cells that can charge that kept it going through the night and cloudy seasons.
The biggest social and economical impact of Solar energy is that it can be constantly replenished and will never run out and will be providing clean power of sufficient quantity to the power deprived people in our State. Let us pledge to save electricity and deploy Smart Technologies to replace ageing infrastructure for the sustainable development of our motherland J&K.
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