Crores lost

A joint study by Manufacturers Association for Information Technology and Emerson Network Power (India) had earlier noted that Indian companies lost Rs 43,205 crore in financial year 2008-09 due to high occurrence of power outages, both scheduled and non scheduled. The study said that the amount of such direct losses has more than doubled since 2003 when it amounted to Rs 22,000 crore.

Now a study by power genset maker Wartsila India says Indians are spending around $6.2 billion (Rs.30,000 crore) every year to run their power back-up systems to escape frequent outages.

The erratic power supply in the country has helped the power back-up equipment industry - inverters, batteries and small gensets - grow to the present size of around $20.8 Billion (Rs.100,000 crore).

The real cost of power that Indians pay is far higher than what they think. The diesel used to power gensets is subsidised. Further, the quality of power from those equipment is also poor, according to the company spokesperson.

With the money people have already invested for buying power back-up systems, the country could have set up power plants with a capacity of 25,000 MW. The solution cited by the company is that the government go for rapid capacity build-up, for which resources could be raised by charging a "reliability surcharge" of 50 paise per unit on consumers.

Whether it is outages or power quality, an equally good solution would be for big industrial units to go for their own captive power plants rather than use diesel back-up systems. The options are many for such plants, with renewable energy also showing much promise.

The excess power from such captive plants could be sold to the grid and help bring in revenues.

This would also ease the power demand from the grid. What do you think?