TWO SUCCESSIVE POWER BLACK- OUTS IN INDIA IMPACT 0NE-HALF OF INDIA’S 1.2 BILLION PEOPLE

JULY 30-31 and following, 2012

Walter Hays, Global Alliance for Disaster Reduction, University of

North Carolina, USA

LOCATION MAP

BLACKOUTS ON TWO SUCCESSIVE DAYS CREATE

CHAOS IN INDIA

OVER 600 MILLION PEOPLE AND ALL COMMUNITY POWER-DEPENDENT

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

DIMENSIONS OF THE BLACKOUTS

• Power grids in 19 of India’s 28 States stretching from Assam, near China, to the Himalayas and the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, shut down

What is dramatic about these blackouts is that they have

impacted the entire country.

BLACKOUT NO SURPRISE FOR INDIA’S BUSINESSES

• India's well known, unreliable power system had already forced businesses to create a “workaround electricity system” of noisy, dirty and expensive diesel generators.

INDIA’S BUSINESSES LOSE MONEY, BUT ABLE TO COPE

• Although very costly for a businesses’ bottom line, most large businesses were prepared and able to cope with what may be the “world’s worst blackout.”

On Monday (July 30th), India was forced to buy power

from tiny Bhutan

HOW BAD WAS IT?

• The worst blackout in India’s history that spread to more than half the country Tuesday, reinforced concerns that the nation’s inefficient power sector could undermine its long-term economic ambitions to become a SUPERPOWER.

INTERNATIONAL EMBARASSMENT

The scale of the blackouts caused India acute embarrassment on the

international stage.

CAUTION:

DON’T THINK THAT INDIA IS THE ONLY COUNTRY THAT IS VULNERABLE

TO POWER OUTAGES

POWER STABILITY: HARDER TO ACHIEVE

• India is NOT uniquely vulnerable to large-scale grid failures.

• The growing complexity and reliance on the electric grid is making power stability harder to achieve in both developed and fast-growing countries.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS

YOU CAN NEVER PREVENT ALL THE POSSIBLE FAILURES AND THEIR

EFFECTS

THE CAUSES:

1) India’s antiquated power systems, 2) An increase in peak

demand caused not by the heat, but by an unexpected need to pump water from wells for agricultural

uses due to much less rain during the monsoon season, …

THE CAUSES (continued):

3) Low current rainfall has also restricted the amount of

hydroelectric power delivered by dams, normally a significant percentage of India’s power

Monday’s failure was also blamed on individual states

drawing too much power from the grid, in defiance of

regulations.

Central government was supposed to warn states if

they were drawing excessive power from the system, but NO warnings

were issued on Monday or Tuesday.

GAUHATI: NO POWER IN THE LINES

NEW DELHI: HUGE TRAFFIC JAM; JULY 30, 2012

NEW DELHI: COMMUTERS OUTSIDE SUBWAY STATION

NEW DELHI: COMMUTERS WAITING FOR TRAIN SERVICE

•

DIMENSIONS OF THE IMPACTS

• All power-dependent community functions (e.g., government, business enterprise, hospitals, schools, …) in 19 States, were shut down.

DIMENSIONS OF THE IMPACTS

• Some major city hospitals and office buildings had to fire up diesel generators.

DIMENSIONS OF THE IMPACTS

• Trains and subways brought to a halt.

DIMENSIONS OF THE IMPACTS

• Two hundred miners were stranded in three deep coal shafts in the state of West Bengal when their electric elevators stopped working.

DIMENSIONS OF THE IMPACTS

• Wheat-belts:Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in the Ganges Plains, needing electricity to pump water from wells, were hit hard

POWER RESTORED, FOR NOW

3:00 PM TUESDAY, JULY 31 FOR EMERGENCY SERVICES

“NORMAL” ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2012

NEW DELHI: POWER RESTORED; CABLES AND WIRES NOTWITHSTANDING

•

A TYPICAL UNANSWERED QUESTION

Were the power outages “accidents” that were just

waiting to happen?

A TYPICAL UNANSWERED QUESTION

Are the causes of India’s power outages more political than from lack of technology or inadequate

engineering?

A TYPICAL UNANSWERED QUESTION

Big cities like New Delhi have backup power, but what might

happen during surgery in a small town?.

A TYPICAL UNANSWERED QUESTION

How many will die because of this historic blackout...

10? ---100? --- 1,000?

INDIA’S LONG TERM NEED FOR POWER

At present, about 300 million people in India have no access to power, and 300

million more have only sporadic access.

THE LONG TERM QUESTION

Grappling with the slowest economic growth in nine years, can India pump $1 trillion into infrastructure and power over

the next five years, as planned?

TIME FOR A SHIFT IN TECHNOLOGY

• India's disaster illustrates the perils of the current practice of relying on manual control of the power grid.

THE GRID OPERATOR

• The primary function of grid operator is to anticipate load and to maintain a steady balance between power supply and demand.

THE GRID SIGNAL

• The grid signal operates at a set frequency—60 hertz in the U.S. and 50 hertz in India —and when supply and demand fall out of sync, the frequency will either dip or rise.

KEEPING THE GRID SIGNAL STEADY

• TIn the U.S., grid operators have "hot" generators on standby to ramp up power in order to keep a close-to-steady frequency, which works if the generators are not maxed out.

COSTLY AND IMPRACTICAL IN INDIA

• In a country like India, it's both costly and impractical to keep 10 percent of the generation capacity on contingency when you may only use it once in a lifetime.

THE TECHNOLOGY TO KEEP THE SIGNAL STEADY EXISTS NOW

• A shift in technology from manual control of the grid (which is common in India and many places around the

world) to more advanced control technology can help grids recover more effectively from outages when they occur.