India Power Grid Failure

[JEast]

India is not unaccustomed to power blackouts, but this one was reported as over 300+ million effected.  That is more than the US and Canada combined to put it in persepective.

 

http://hosted2.ap.org/OHCAN/CREPnewswire/Article_2012-07-30-India-Power%20Outage/id-4891ee75eb1e417894a42b266bd3b1e2

 

Cheers

JEast

[yp]

Honestly, having emigrated from India, it makes me sad to see the situation of this amazing country.

 

Especially pathetic to see the poor excuses the politicians are able to get away with;

"Shinde deflected criticism, pointing out that the United States and Brazil also had huge power failures in recent years.

"I ask you to look at the power situation in other countries as well," he said."

 

Looking at the facts there are actually enough resources in the country to have ample energy, food, water to feed and house everybody and stabilize the population and economy.

 

Since we're on the topic on this thread, I'd like the hear the opinions of the members of this forum (some of whose opinions I highly respect) regarding how they could see India getting away from corruption specifically and poverty, etc.

 

- I think education and awareness will be the largest factors. Education has the effect of slowing down over population growth. Awareness and the desire to hold people accountable will take the country's law system. But how would that sorta change come about? What can be done on a practical yet substantial level?

[woodstove]

First, to look on the positive side ... it is an incredible achievement to have been able to build a regional grid which can serve 300 million people, with way more than 99 percent reliability.  This outage was corrected faster than the prior outage, I believe.  So yes the politician's response is not completely inappropriate.

 

Secound, the grid reliability issue ... from brief info, a news report, I believe the overdemand may have related to power-sharing arrangements.  We have seen in North America difficulties related to the agreement structure getting ahead of the physical transmission facilities and it might be well to place some limits on leveraging power transportability.  Perhaps 1-2 percent of capacity is adequate to smooth demand, perhaps 10 percent, but whatever is committed should be backed by reserves of spare capacity.  Think of it as similar to bank capital.

 

Third, education ... I heard a senior administrator from Indian university system speak, about 13 percent of 20-ish population in India is getting some post-secondary education of all types -- university, trade, etc.  In North America much higher, and in Canada higher still.  That is a major strategy in Ontario, and I see its benefits.  There is a potential difficulty, in that people are educated beyond their work requirements, so society has to redefine self-esteem to include general conversability.  An old idea which is coming back. 

 

Fourth, social structures ...  The book of Hernando de Soto on property rights may have some useful ideas.  I've only skimmed a bit of it, and surely there are others here who can discuss such matters knowledgably.  From the MERS abuses, and recent collapse of custodians in the commodities, I think we may be going backwards in the matter of "property" registration / rights. All eggs in one basket makes it easier to steal the entire basket.  Still, some ideas may arise via de Soto's book's discussion.