Sucheta Dalal :Indians spend Rs300 billion annually to deal with power outages
Sucheta Dalal

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Indians spend Rs300 billion annually to deal with power outages  

August 26, 2009

 

Indians spend a whopping Rs300 billion every year on fuel and maintenance cost on power back-up equipments to secure themselves against frequent outages.
 
According to a pan-Indian study commissioned by Wartsila India, the expenses on power generation using inverters, generators and other back-up equipments are almost 80% more than what consumers pay on grid supply.
 
The operational expenses on generating back-up power in the country are estimated to be around Rs300 billion every year, the study titled "The Real Cost of Power" said.
 
Dwelling on the cost difference, it says a consumer on an average spends 80% above the grid cost when faced with 6 hours to 7 hours of load-shedding everyday and the cost increases three-fold if all the appliances like fridge and TV are run on back-up. On the correlation between the growth of the gross domestic product and power generation capacity, the study suggests that the growth rate for both should be same.
 
Releasing the study, Wartsila India managing director Rakesh Sarin said a 'reliability surcharge' of as little as 50 paisa per unit can support rapid power generation capacity build-up in the country. "This surcharge would be far less than the extra charges consumers incur on back-up equipments," Sarin added.
 
"While initiatives such as the setting up of Ultra Mega Power Projects will, hopefully, help in adding base load capacities in the country, it is high time we looked at other complementary technologies and solutions to impart much-needed flexibility into the system to improve peak load management," he said.
 
The study was carried out over a five week period in May-June 2009 and covered 1,500 respondents across 21 cities in the country.
 
Earlier in May, Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) and Emerson Network Power (India) in a study pointed out that all the Indian companies have suffered a massive loss of over Rs430 billion during the year to end-March due to non-availability and mismanagement of power. The study further said that the amount of such direct losses has more than doubled since 2003 when these amounted to Rs220 billion.
 
"In India, while the metros have a challenge on power supply, the interiors reflect a still grave picture. The problem is further compounded by unclean power and other basic constraints like earthing, cabling and lack of a viable infrastructure," Emerson Network Power's managing director, Sandeep Nair had said. - Yogesh Sapkale [email protected]

-- Sucheta Dalal