Darkness
I was in Vasai village the other day, way-up in Mumbai’s northern quarter. It is technically so far away that it is not in Mumbai District, though practically still in Bombay [via the local train system]. Vasai [then called Bassein] was once the capital of the Portuguese colony in India but as the Marathas and the Brits mashed them up all that remains now is the ruins of this once fortified city. I went exploring these ruins a couple of weeks ago, but that is another story all together. After a sweaty day in the sun we decided we needed something chilled and refreshing. We reached this roadside eatery, the time a little after 2 p.m.
“Bhaiya , thanda me kya hai,” I said him casually. [hindi : Brother, you got something cold to drink ?]
The short man in an untidy blue shirt smiled apologetically and told me.,” Sorry, hum thanda nahi rakhte hai.” [hindi: Sorry,we don't have anything cold[drinks].]
Although brands like Coke and Pepsi are not all that old in our semi-liberalised country they are still readily available in most parts of semi-urban India.
“Kyun?” I questioned him.[hindi: Why?]
“Kya kare bhau, yahan Thane taluka me har din paanch ghanta load shedding rehta hai na. Toh kuch thanda hi nahi rehta hai,” he said to me in an apologetic tone. [hindi: What can we brother, here in Thane district he have 5 hours of loadshedding [powercuts]. So how can we keep anything cold.]
There is severe power shortage here in the state of Maharashtra [Mumbai/Bombay is the state capital of Maharashtra]. The state government’s answer to this shortage are frequent power brownouts, sometimes as long as 5 hours each day. Mumbai has been lucky to have been skived away from this crisis and enjoys 24 hours of uninterrupted power. But as the power shortage increases and the state government continues to respond ineffectually it looks like Mumbai too will join Maharashtra in darkness.
This looks to be the case as many of Mumbai’s power service providers are hinting at power cuts this summer.
Akshay, it is indeed very sad that load shedding isn’t uniform in Mumbai. The unfortunate ones living in the distant townships have to suffer.
I remember the hoardings in Mumbai were going to be blacked out to save power, what happened about that? Although it might help save power (I don’t know how much) it would look Mumbai look very somber.
I wonder why other ways of generating electricity aren’t being explored.
I wonder why other ways of generating electricity aren’t being explored.
Like what?
Selma – The saddest thing is that this power shortage has been a long time coming. You do not end up with a 500MV power shortage over night. Us citizens of Bombay are spoilt for power compared to many in Maharashtra and in India for that matter. Let’s admit it India is mostly run on inverters. On the flip side the government has made no conscious effort to bridge the gap.
To answer both yours and Mitesh’s question we could re-commission Dabhol. Other short falls would be met by unconventional sources of power. Wind Energy for one. Privatisation of power is also a step in the right direction. One of the reason has been saved form this on going crisis has been the fact that Bombay has private power distribution. In the rest of maharashtra is handled by a bureaucratic state agency MSEB.
how abt nuclear?
Mitesh – Bombay already has a nuclear source of power in Tarapur. Nuclear could be a valid source of energy in the future. But I think new Nuclear plants take years to build. May be if that energy goes through with USA we could see more nuclear power.
State government is to blame for crisis. In 10 years (5 years of Sena-BJP and 5 years of Cong-NCP) there was no new power generation plants approved except Enron (Dabhol) one. Demand was increasing but politicians kept themselves busy sinking Enron project in Arabian sea and then bringing it back. Power generation capacity has to be planned well in advance since power plants cannot be built in short time (Nuclear as well as Thermal, hydroelectric or unconventional like wind energy plants) Now government has woke up and approved lot of new power projects but to make up the shortfall we have to wait till 2010.
Why Mumbai is spared from load shedding? There are several reasons. In Mumbai power is distributed by Tata, BEST and Reliace energy (formarly BSES). Tata has huge generation capacity and Reliance also has some. Tata + Reliace generation capacity is enough for Mumbai supply till now but Mumbai will also face shortfall from 2006 summer. So Mumbaikars get ready for power cuts…
Use electronic ballast.
Replacing Conventional tubelight chokes with electronic ones will give good amount of power/energy saving…35-40% A single house may have only 3 – 8 tubelights & minimum of 10 or more in offices. If these conventional chokes are replaced with electronic chokes it will enable a huge amount of power saving in the city.
15-20 Watts of energy is lost behind a single tubelight with conventional choke. (Ballast)
Lets take the loss on lower side as 15 Watts per tubelight
If you have say 10( minimum) tubelights installed in your office the loss is multiplied by 10.
15W loss * 10(tubelights) = 150Watt loss of energy per hour.
Now 150W multiplied by hours of usage.. say 5 hours for residence and 10 hours for offices…
150 * 10 = 1500 watts loss per day.
1500 * 25 (working days) = 37500Watts per month.(37units)
So currently we are loosing 37500 watts of energy per office assuming that we are using 10 tubelights for 10 hours a day with conventional chokes.
We have lakhs of such offices & industries using 100s of tubelights per office.
Recommendation:
Replace conventional chokes with electronic ones.
Use CFL ( compact fluorescent lamps )
Another device is available in the market which helps saving good amount of power if fitted with your power hungry Air conditioners.
These two things will help mumbai save a lot of power and save the city from undesired powercuts.
Ankur Puranik.
Om Microelectronics
Ankur,
Thanks for your very knowledgeable comment. I’m sure such a change will only come about if municipal level pressure is put on the companies to use electronic chokes.