India Gets Electrified
India is world’s third largest producer of electricity behind China and US with a production of 1160 billion units in 2016-2017. The government of India has sanctioned 921 projects under the “Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana” for rural electrification with an aim to electrify 1,21,225 un-electrified villages, intensive electrification of 5,92,979 partially electrified villages and provide free electricity connections to 397.45 lakh BPL (below the poverty line) rural households.
India was severely affected by two black outs on July 30 and 31, 2012 across 22 states. The largest power failure affected more than 620 million people with an estimated 32 Gigawatts (GW) capacity going offline.
India was facing electricity crisis at large but it has made continuous growth in meeting the demand of the electricity. In 2017, India ranked 26th in World Bank’s electricity accessibility ranking compared to 99th in 2014. That is such a tremendous growth. Power deficit has drastically come down in last three years and India has become a energy surplus country for the first time in history,under the Modi - led NDA government and consequentially Piyush Goyal has been ranked the best performing minister under the government, according to BW Businessworld survey.
Power deficit (percentage)
The demand and availability have inched closer to equality and the numbers for the last eight years have been presented below. India has become a power surplus country in the FY18, a tremendous production growth of more than 52 percent.
Demand and availability
Power generation from conventional sources has seen a steady rise in the last eight years. India’s power generation capacity has increased from 770 billion units in FY 2004 to 1160 billion units in FY 2017, a remarkable growth of 50 percent. Power generation from non-conventional sources has been a huge positive towards achieving the power demand.
Conventional power generation in the country
The government is making efforts towards clean energy, while the generation growth from conventional sources has been unstable. Promoting LED-bulbs and investing hugely in clean energy will help in achieving the target of electrification of more than 4000 villages left by 2018.
Conventional power growth
The total installed power capacity of India as on 30 April, 2017 was 330260 Megawatt. The private sector has taken the largest chunk of installation capacity with around 44 percent, while the centre has taken up only 24.57 percent. Tata Power is the India’s largest power company with a generation capacity of 10577 MW. Reliance Energy and Suzlon are other major private players. NTPC and BSES of India are the largest government power generation companies.
Total installed capacity
Looking at the progress made in the last three years, NDA government has done a tremendous job to make India energy efficient, but a lot more needs to be done to get rural India electrified.
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