^^ Tell that the people who still don't have a power line to their homes, or those folks who do but can only look at them with longing
somnath wrote:Worrying still is the fact that at last count, 57 base-load thermal units across India’s northern and western heartland were faced with ‘reserve shutdown’, a technical term for a unit shut down due to lack of demand.
Lack of demand from whom? The end user, or the EBs staggerring under enormous fiscal burdens that they cannot afford to purchase power?
Hmm, let's see what this article posted by you to back your fantastic claim says (btw, this article was posted months ago on the power thread, so, yes, folks here are aware of what it says):
Power minister Piyush Goyal on April 30 told Parliament that most parts of the country have surplus power. "The sad part is that states are not acquiring or buying power to be able to give their residents uninterrupted power supply," he told the Lok Sabha.
Does that necessarily mean over capacity?
A day before on April 29, he found there was so much surplus power at 3.30 pm that the national grid monitoring station indicated power was available at "zero rupee per unit".
Okay. Outcome of no buyers in the market. Still no conclusion of overcapacity.
Similarly, a look at the data from Indian Energy Exchange shows there were more bids for selling power than for buying in April. In the complicated power trading business, this may not be seen as an empirical proof. But, it certainly is a strong indicator of the trend. While the poor financial health of the state discoms is largely to blame, there are other factors such as fuel prices, difficulty in bill collection, etc that prevent utilities from procuring power. This has led to a fall in demand in the face of rising capacity.
Again, yes there is surplus power, but it is not a definitive sign of overcapacity as much of the power is not being evacuated due to systemic issues. Not overcapacity. The article then dwells on these systemic issues:
gas-fired plants. These plants are idling because supply of cheap domestic gas has been snapped due to shortage. Since utilities booked the capacity of these plants on domestic gas-based tariff, they are unwilling to consider running them with imported fuel as the cost would double.
Coal-fired plants too face somewhat similar situation. Many of them have to import to make up for shortfall in domestic supplies. This raises fuel and transport costs.
Many utilities are also turning to power exchange to take advantage of falling rates as inter-region connectivity and transmission network's carrying capacity improves.
Then there are heavily deficit states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala that pay Rs 8.5 per unit to buy power from the exchange. "If there was better connectivity with the south, our unbought 100 million units would have been lapped up by these states," the NTPC executive said.
Central Electricity Authority data shows that power plants were spinning at an average 63% of their capacity, down from 78% three years ago. The idling gas-fired plants may have much to do with this, since generation capacity has been going up steadily during this period.
Hmm, so these reasons for the lower PLF are due to systemic issues, not because of overcapacity. If the grid were built as planned, maybe TN and Kerala would have consumed most of the surplus, leaving less surplus on the table. Where is the overcapacity then?
somnath wrote:I can give you more "professional" sources of data but I suspect they will be a touch dense for you, given how quickly you assume which "school of economics" I belong to (well, actually halfway between the Austrian and the Marxist will be my choice
![Wink :wink:](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
).
You know, instead of appearing to be above us uneducated economic dunces, why don't to try to educate us? We may be able to manage reading these sources and figure out what you are saying. Of course, that may not work in your favour, hence the pontification?
We have seen such behaviour in the previous dispensation (not saying you belong there or support them, but that you sound similar). "Let there be money", says GoI, and voila, comes NREGA, whose funds are eaten on the way. "Let there be food", said GoI, and voila, comes out the Food Security Bill, giving the farmer the same food he produces at lower cost than his labours. Finally, "Let there be light", says GoI, and voila, the light bulb should come to life like in the movie Swades, but it doesn't. Fact of life: it is not that easy. Just building a few power plants without ensuring evacuation and delivery will lead to 'on-paper' overcapacity only, and large parts of the country suffer from power cuts and cannot buy from the grid since it doesn't exist. Telling us to eat cakes then is only adding insult to injury.