Bharat Rakshak

Vayutuvan wrote:India's total installed capacity is 282 GW

Here is the Wikipedia page on that. Let us talk numbers. At a gross level, assuming that at the peak demand, the entire 282 GW is consumed then we are talking a reduction of 1+ GW at 282 GW. Better calculations can be made, of course.

Even if we cut down the peak demand to 100 GW, then the reduction is 1%. This is peanuts.

As Suraj said it is >360 GW installed capacity. Actual generation is much less than that on any given day. Nuclear is the most efficient and RES is the least efficient. At night when the wind doesn’t blow as hard and the sun doesn’t shine, then RES efficiencies are abysmal. Reducing night time load by nearly 1.2 GW is nothing to sneeze at.

Keep in mind that power generation is one thing and actual efficiencies of generation is another. Then there are losses in transmission, which is much less today than in past, but still present.

mort walker ji, so what is the peak demand? a loose upper limit is ok. we know that it is <= to the installed capacity. I agree with what you are saying. let us get a tight upper bound on the peak demand. then and then only one can sneeze or not sneeze at 1.12 GW reduction at the peak.

Vayutuvan wrote:mort walker ji, so what is the peak demand? a loose upper limit is ok. we know that it is <= to the installed capacity. I agree with what you are saying. let us get a tight upper bound on the peak demand. then and then only one can sneeze or not sneeze at 1.12 GW reduction at the peak.

Your answers are in the Central Electric Authority website. Data is available upto August 2019 and is typically updated monthly for the previous month.

Peak demand for August 2019 was 177.968 GW and production was 177.525 GW. A shortfall of ~442 MW. From April 2019 to Aug. 2019, the production shortfall was 1.271 GW (see the link below) in a worst case as it covered summer months. In the winter months the shortfall should be less, but I will wait for the report to come out. I think it should be <300 MW. Therefore the savings from LED replacement of 1.12 GW is significant. What this also tells us is that from installed capacity of 360 GW, the efficiency in production and distribution is <50%. The more use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), typically solar and wind, will only decrease this efficiency. Nuclear energy is very efficient, with least impact environmental impact, but it has a high initial cost.

http://cea.nic.in/reports/monthly/power ... eak-08.pdf

Recycling is a priority if EVs are to go the Li-ion battery way - more than lithium itself, it seems cobalt would be the limiting resource.

It seems aluminium-air batteries would have better energy densities than iron-air, even exceeding the energy density of gasoline.

Prolly, just for clarity, let's say there is a model where energy requirements are broken down into following:
A. Refinery at shores
B. Some amount of strategic stock (of oil AND H2O) to tide over price fluctuations
C. Hydrogen+Oxygen gas tanks model for efficiency and last mile connectivity

- The purpose of refinery is to make efficient fuel out of cheap crude
- strategic stock of (oil and H2O) to reduce demand deficiency
- H2O tanks to take energy (including power) to place of local depot that are designed (areawise distance from power generator plant) efficiently
- H2O is also environment fri and ly and such, but if used to charge batteries at local efficient (onlee) charging places, can replace oil 'locally'.

In other words make
- oil/renewable into H2O (efficient charging locations ECLs) then transport to local ECLs located at least power-wastage places - to get over power wastage
- strategic storage of H2O for demand fluctuations (and interruptions external haks and others)

What is needed is to put huge efforts for H2O tech.
Again just for clarity.

For load smoothing, storage of excess as "kinetic energy in vacuum chamber enclosed flywheels" seem to be superior to batteries. Another alternative that was proposed is to pump up water or lift up big blocks of concrete and recover the PE during peak demand times.

Vayutuvan wrote:For load smoothing, storage of excess as "kinetic energy in vacuum chamber enclosed flywheels" seem to be superior to batteries. Another alternative that was proposed is to pump up water or lift up big blocks of concrete and recover the PE during peak demand times.

The losses are still too high and for a large scale it makes little economic sense. The only place this can work is if you have a solar park near a hydro electric plant. Nuclear power is the way to go using thorium. That is until we get fusion power in place in the next 20 years.

One gigawatt of generation capacity costs around $1.5 billion in India.

A_Gupta wrote:One gigawatt of generation capacity costs around $1.5 billion in India.

Capex Opex or levelized?

Mort Walker wrote:The losses are still too high and for a large scale it makes little economic sense. The only place this can work is if you have a solar park near a hydro electric plant. Nuclear power is the way to go using thorium. That is until we get fusion power in place in the next 20 years.

Can no useful work be done near the power plant? In that case, we should co-locate battery, solar panel, and windmill manufacturing plants right next to the power plants. Coal-fired power plants tend to be near coal mines. Other mines - iron ore, bauxite, copper - have a high chance of being nearby. There is little reason to have steel plants like Mukund or heavy machinery like L&T in a place like Mumbai. In the olden days, it would have made sense to be near a port. But why now?

^^^ to build and start up, so I guess capex?

A_Gupta wrote:One gigawatt of generation capacity costs around $1.5 billion in India.

Where did that cost info come from? Remember that cost is for >85% efficiency. Solar is 11-15% and wind 35-45% efficient. In other words, it costs more, but is better able to meet peak power demands.

The NPCIL has expertise on the CANDU design using PHWR and has brought costs down. New designs using thorium have been developed by BARC, but have not been finalized.

Mort Walker wrote:

Vayutuvan wrote:mort walker ji, so what is the peak demand? a loose upper limit is ok. we know that it is <= to the installed capacity. I agree with what you are saying. let us get a tight upper bound on the peak demand. then and then only one can sneeze or not sneeze at 1.12 GW reduction at the peak.

Your answers are in the Central Electric Authority website. Data is available upto August 2019 and is typically updated monthly for the previous month.

Peak demand for August 2019 was 177.968 GW and production was 177.525 GW. A shortfall of ~442 MW. From April 2019 to Aug. 2019, the production shortfall was 1.271 GW (see the link below) in a worst case as it covered summer months. In the winter months the shortfall should be less, but I will wait for the report to come out. I think it should be <300 MW. Therefore the savings from LED replacement of 1.12 GW is significant. What this also tells us is that from installed capacity of 360 GW, the efficiency in production and distribution is <50%. The more use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), typically solar and wind, will only decrease this efficiency. Nuclear energy is very efficient, with least impact environmental impact, but it has a high initial cost.

http://cea.nic.in/reports/monthly/power ... eak-08.pdf

The efficiency of RES will increase when coupled with large scale battery storage. Certain events have shown this to be happening and it will be part of a long term trend.

hgupta wrote: The efficiency of RES will increase when coupled with large scale battery storage. Certain events have shown this to be happening and it will be part of a long term trend.

What certain events? There have been incremental improvements in battery systems, but what we're talking about is akin to steam engine improvements of over 100 years. Batteries are the early 21st century equivalent to the early 20th century steam engine. Stop thinking steam engine and think about improving electron flow.

The idea of large scale battery storage for large power plants is a fallacy. Then cost goes up very high (>$100/KwHr today) along with environmental degradation. For RES, storage is essentially the electric grid as dishaji pointed out some time back. Nuclear power is Rs. 4.4/KWHr (unit) wholesale to SEBs. Solar and wind are of course cheaper, but with large scale battery storage, and the problems associated with it, will put the cost near Rs. 10/unit wholesale to SEBs. It's not worth it and we won't see it in our lifetimes. It is better to spend that money on fuel cells and fusion research.

Mort Walker wrote:

A_Gupta wrote:One gigawatt of generation capacity costs around $1.5 billion in India.

Where did that cost info come from? Remember that cost is for >85% efficiency. Solar is 11-15% and wind 35-45% efficient. In other words, it costs more, but is better able to meet peak power demands.

The NPCIL has expertise on the CANDU design using PHWR and has brought costs down. New designs using thorium have been developed by BARC, but have not been finalized.

The numbers are a few years old. When the Chinese were building Pakistan's Sahiwal coal-fired power plants, I compared the publicly stated costs of those with comparable power plants built by Indian corporation (Tatas, Adani, Reliance, etc.) in India, Vietnam and elsewhere (currently escapes my memory; will probably come back in some hours , that is life these days). One finding was the approximate cost of generating capacity, and the second was that China was charging Pakistan about 50% more than the Indian costs.

hgupta ji, please do give us cradle to cradle embodied energy figures for batteries taking into consideration how many recharge cycles these batteries can withstand. after that what is the energy to recycle the material? that is what we need to consider - cradle to cradle. not cradle to grave.

by the way, CER prices crashed from 20 euro per ton to about 0.24 euro and have recovered some what to 0.35 euro.

sharpest fall was around 2008.

if companies of renewable power generation are profitable only if CERs are at certain level (which was the case in India afte Kyoto - many foreign companies gave funding to local small businesses saying that they will buy certain number of CERs at spot price) they are in trouble now. many of is 4-10 mw plants are non-operational. bad idea to business investment on the say so of alarmists at the UN and /or airopeans.

A_Gupta wrote:

Mort Walker wrote:
Where did that cost info come from? Remember that cost is for >85% efficiency. Solar is 11-15% and wind 35-45% efficient. In other words, it costs more, but is better able to meet peak power demands.

The NPCIL has expertise on the CANDU design using PHWR and has brought costs down. New designs using thorium have been developed by BARC, but have not been finalized.

The numbers are a few years old. When the Chinese were building Pakistan's Sahiwal coal-fired power plants, I compared the publicly stated costs of those with comparable power plants built by Indian corporation (Tatas, Adani, Reliance, etc.) in India, Vietnam and elsewhere (currently escapes my memory; will probably come back in some hours , that is life these days). One finding was the approximate cost of generating capacity, and the second was that China was charging Pakistan about 50% more than the Indian costs.

According to the world nuclear association in 2015:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/informati ... power.aspx



These figures are actually higher than what NPCIL is capable of. Further, the use of Thorium sands and going away from pressurized system will bring costs down. The question is, given the capital cost being so high, it makes more sense to use natural gas to handle the base load and then RES for peak loads during the day.

Niti Aayog travels to `Lithium Triangle’ to review possibilities for Lithium Mining and Exploration

A high-level delegation from Niti Ayog led by Dr VK Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog and Khanij Bidesh India Ltd. recently concluded a visit to “Lithium Triangle’’ countries – Chile and Bolivia to review the agreements related to Lithium mining earlier this year.

Bolivia scraps lithium deal with Germany’s ACI

Protests in Chile, Bolivia threaten India’s search for assets in 'Lithium Triangle'

Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal

Renewable Energy Targets and Status

https://thebulletin.org/2019/12/good-ne ... le-energy/

Indeed, India is on track to boast just 2 percent growth in carbon emissions in 2019; the country’s lowest rate of carbon-emissions growth this century,

In 2017, India’s then-energy minister, Piyush Goyal, introduced online competitive “reverse auctions”—where suppliers can view the current bid and make lower bids if they wish—to win the right to build new renewable energy infrastructure across India. This encouraged each Indian state to compete with others, given that both local and international developers were able to choose sites with the best wind and solar resource

The bidding for renewable projects became so frenetic that five leading Indian billionaires wrote a joint letter to the prime minister demanding limits to the injections of foreign capital. They said they could not compete with the flood of international investment that was driving electricity prices down and crowding out India’s domestic giants. The government reluctantly complied, putting a cap of $1 billion per bid per participant.

Not only were the bids being offered about 20-to-30 percent below the wholesale price of electricity, they were also fixed at a flat rate for 25 years. In doing this, India created a deflationary low-cost electricity system running on zero inflation. A fixed rate is a very material benefit for investors, given consumer inflation was running at 10 percent annually when Modi was first elected Prime Minister in 2014.

since 2017, one solar energy company has been generating electricity in the Indian state of Rajasthan at the unheard-of, guaranteed wholesale price of 2.44 rupees per kilowatt-hour, or 3 US cents. (In comparison, the average price for electricity in the United States is presently about 13.19 cents per kilowatt-hour, and some locations in the country pay far more. As recently as 2008, the average homeowner on Block Island, Rhode Island, paid a staggering 61 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, before any other fees or charges—which can nearly double the price. And businesses had it even worse, with some business owners reporting electric bills of as much as $30,000 per month.)

Was happy to see results and sustained progress...wasn't sure how to cross post in economics and achievement threads. Hope we get better at managing the grid, storage, manufacturing as well as block and tackle chinese dumping

sooraj wrote:Niti Aayog travels to `Lithium Triangle’ to review possibilities for Lithium Mining and Exploration

A high-level delegation from Niti Ayog led by Dr VK Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog and Khanij Bidesh India Ltd. recently concluded a visit to “Lithium Triangle’’ countries – Chile and Bolivia to review the agreements related to Lithium mining earlier this year.

Bolivia scraps lithium deal with Germany’s ACI

Protests in Chile, Bolivia threaten India’s search for assets in 'Lithium Triangle'

Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal

Now you see why I didn't become a huge fan of India's plans of building huge battery factories or gigafactories as we called them that are based on lithium. Lithium is the new oil of our century. We are better off in researching and developing alternative battery energy storage that use other materials that are readily available in India and not subjected to these kind of pressures.

Not to mention intervention of religious groups in SA countries.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/co ... 387998.ece

Worth mentioning- first 500 MW lignite based thermal power unit.

^^^Lignite is a type of coal. One 500MW lignite is worth half dozen large solar parks. As predicted, base load of thermal and nuclear is needed, and RES will pick up peak load. Reality of power efficiency is indeed a cruel mistress. Everyone in this thread and forum have espousing solar power, battery storage, and Rube Goldberg devices. If we want to reduce pollution and CO2, then newer nuclear power designs must come online quickly.

Rs 1.5 lakh crore: The bill India is set to pay for the coming power game changer.

India’s nationwide roll-out of smart power meters, aimed at supporting ailing utilities and bolstering reliable electricity supply, will cost about Rs 1.5 lakh crore ($21 billion), according to a government estimate. The prepaid meters are expected to help to improve billing and collection, which are the most basic problems facing the country’s ailing distribution companies, known as discoms.

These utilities, mostly controlled by their state governments, lose money because of poor billing and theft of power, which often leads to them delaying payments to generators and depriving their customers of reliable supplies. The price tag estimated for the smart meters includes hardware, installation and operations, such as the system integration and data analysis, according to Power Secretary Sanjiv Nandan Sahai.

The planned 25 crore prepaid meters across the country will raise enough revenue to cover the costs and lead to some savings for state power distributors, Sahai said in an interview in New Delhi. The government will run an auction for the contract to install the meters, said Sahai, who called them a “game changer” for the sector.

The systems will provide discoms with real-time data on consumption of each consumer, helping them spot thefts and losses, as well as plan power purchases better, according to Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner for power and utilities at PricewaterhouseCoopers India.

“Smart meters have the potential to alter the landscape and operations of discoms across the metering, billing and collection cycle,” Mohapatra said. “They can drive energy efficiency, allow customers to manage consumption, help discoms plan their capital expenditure better and lead to their overall financial improvement, benefiting the whole sector value chain.”

The country has already installed 10 lakh smart meters across four states, the power ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

Renewable can be combined with Indias massive hydro electric complex, by using pumped storage. If there is an excess of power, then water is pumped back up. It works a kind of a battery. New battery tech will also bring down the (24 hour supply) cost of energy in RES favour. Coal and Gas will rapidly decline. Coal plants far away from pits should be shut down first, as they are taking up a lot of space on the rail tracks.

Nuclear energy will be kept, more from a strategic perspective rather then an economic one. Nuclear power does not make economic sense any more.

Coal plants far away from pits should be shut down first

Let's be a bit wise and think about distributing risk first though. For example Chinese telling Bhutanese what to do with hydro potential.

vishvak wrote:

Coal plants far away from pits should be shut down first

Let's be a bit wise and think about distributing risk first though. For example Chinese telling Bhutanese what to do with hydro potential.

Bhutan and Nepals hydropower plants are not required. India has sufficient hydro dams.

Nice article
https://www.rediff.com/business/report/ ... 200404.htm

Power System Operation Corp Ltd -- the agency responsible for managing the grid -- has mapped all India lighting load and estimated such demand at 12-13 gigawatts (out of a total consumption of 125-126 GW).

During the evening peak hours -- 18:10 to 20:00 hrs -- hydro generation will be reduced and conserved for providing flexibility during 21:00 hrs event. During this time, thermal and gas generation will be scheduled in a manner so as to manage the peak.

Subsequently, after the peak hours, at thermal Inter State Generating Stations (ISGS) generation would be gradually reduced to near technical minimum level of 60 per cent by 20:55 hrs and simultaneously, hydro generation will be increased to maintain the load generation balance.

Hydro generation and gas generation will be ramped down starting from 20:57 hrs keeping a watch on the system frequency. The hydro units will be kept rolling at 0-10 per cent of the rating and not to be disconnected during this period. Gas station will be ramped down to the minimum level.

Ramping up of thermal machines will be carried out from 21:05 hrs onwards. Further, from 21:09 hrs onwards, hydro generation will be ramped up to meet the increase in load. After stabilisation of system parameters hydro units may be withdrawn.

This is why i like these guys so much, unnecessary extra work for a hubris created problem, production freeze (steady state condition), monies loss due to production from higher power cost sources and high chances of grid failure all for a pointless 9 minute wank.

^^^That 10% of power generation includes commercial lighting. Residential lighting load in the US is about 5%. In India it is probably less. Many have already shifted to LED lighting as it consumes half the power of CFLs with greater brightness.

It is not a pointless "9 minute wank", rather it is to motivate and brace the people of India that the country stands united. The hubris is your own for making a pointless inference about crashing the grid.

I have a gut feeling that this is also a calculated risk taken by the govt to stress test our power distribution infrastructure using this Corona opportunity of lower usage due to industrial shutdowns. Such opportunities do not come every day.

Every modern day corporate does this using "chaos monkey"/"simian army"/"DR and BCP drill"/"Penetration testing".

We did such a stress test for our finance and accounting infra via demonitization.

Corona is already doing such a test of our public health infra.

We have done a test of our public communication effectiveness test via previous "clap for 5 mins" exercise.

Now, we will test our power grid stress test.

Will there be issues? Off course, the whole point is to find the weak links in the chains.

But, we will come out "Anti Fragile" from each of these tests, to use the term coined by Taleb.

^^^This is not a stress test. At the most this will fluctuate 2-3% on the grid and is equivalent to days between summer and monsoon as the demand for power, due to AC, may increase or decrease if there is a heavy rainfall in a region and temperatures drop.

This is an initiative by the PM to unify the country. Those who don't participate will known to be anti-nationals. Lots of FUD being spread by anti-national media and opposition.

Mort, don't have the energy to get into this discussion any more. However, I have multiple classmates in WB and UP state electricity boards in fairly high engineering positions and many of them are Modi Bhakts.

They all agreed that there is a reason to be apprehensive, the July 2012 level multi grid failure is a possibility.

When such folks advises caution, I do take note.

The folks doing back of the envelop calculations are mostly ignorant of the operational constraints on maintaining grid frequency; the real experts working on the grids are on their toes and have already appealed to public to switch on their other electrical equipment during the 9 minute window when lights would be switched off on pan India basis.

Is that appeal a fact or just a WhatsApp forward?

How come we don't see such concerns during the hour long Earth hour every year??

Which is also the reason captive power plants are islanded, as the demand contract with sldc's start from 00 hours, the plants are in such position since sunday morning. In islanded condition, the plant is run in a steady state with all starting stopping activities of larger equipments taken after a long consideration, i have had many such shifts, nerve wracking but exciting.

Rahul M wrote:Is that appeal a fact or just a WhatsApp forward?

How come we don't see such concerns during the hour long Earth hour every year??

Industrial consumption continues during "earth days" in other years. Only when industrial consumption is down; office, cinema halls across india, malls etc are down; the household LED bulbs start getting into calculation. Otherwise, it is not even a blip.

Solution is also simple; just switch on the geysers at home between 8:55 and 9 pm.

Industrial and commercial demand has been down since the 25th. Power production has had time to adjust to the new demand. Residential lighting is just not that much of a load. The 2012 outage was due to interstate power corridors not able to handle some areas which had a higher demand power vs. others that had a lower demand. That was 8 years ago and much has changed since.

Mort Walker wrote:Those who don't participate will known to be anti-nationals. Lots of FUD being spread by anti-national media and opposition.

Gimme a break. How does this "gimmick" qualify as a barometer of patriot/anti-national? We will be shooting ourselves in the foot with this kind of dhimmi arguments. Do light the Diya if you can and do not light it if you don't want it to and that's the end of this.

On the contrary local level TMC leaders are openly threatening that they will note down address of anyone whose home goes dark during that time.

Picklu wrote:

Rahul M wrote:Is that appeal a fact or just a WhatsApp forward?

How come we don't see such concerns during the hour long Earth hour every year??

Industrial consumption continues during "earth days" in other years. Only when industrial consumption is down; office, cinema halls across india, malls etc are down; the household LED bulbs start getting into calculation. Otherwise, it is not even a blip.

Solution is also simple; just switch on the geysers at home between 8:55 and 9 pm.

During Earth hour its not Modi's call so many ignore it.

I have 4 lights ON in the evenings. Each of 12 Watts LED. So a total of 48 Watts. Now a simple fan will be rated over 60 Watts. Why start a geysers which is rated 1K Watts ?

Forget grid, Local area sub station wont even break a sweat with this light switch off\on.
Lets just do what Modi asked us to do.