IT reflects badly on us.

2012 could not have had a worse start for Tamil Nadu. Mired by controversy, the common man is made to believe that 2012 is indeed apocalyptic. We are in the middle of a power crisis that is becoming close to an existential threat and there seems to be no credible policy decisions to improve the situation and the common man has accepted the situation with the same equanimity that he accepts everything that has to do with the government (only that we have a lot of jobs and even the reputation of the state at stake). So what has led us to this dire straits?

To start with we have policy makers who believe that an investment once made in technology is like building the Brihadeshwara temple, it can sustain itself for a 1000 years (what they forgot is that the temple was very richly endowed for its upkeep) We had very little effort , in terms of money and human effort, to modernize the electrical apparatus of the state. We have a whooping 20 % transmission loss (I read somewhere that it was 30 , im giving a very conservative estimate) . As of 2011 we have an installed power capacity of 16000MW. Which means we loose 3200 MW even before the power reaches the end consumer. So why do we have such a ridiculous transmission loss? I have not made a detailed study on this issue, but I can bet my life on the fact that we stilll use antiquated technology or equipment. The lack of investment has not only bogged down our transmission lines but also our power plants. We are way behind in terms of power generation technology. The power sector until recently has been under the complete control of the public sector. There was very little R&D in this area (for that matter any area at all, in our case the build or buy equation always seems to favor the buy option, anyways we have well wishers like IMF and World bank to fund our buys) Bottom line we follow the policy of build and forget (like the fire and forget) This has landed in this spot of bother.

Next in our root causes would be inability of our engineers to come up with out of the box solutions. The state is so accustomed to solving its electricity woes by simply buying electricity from the central grid that they cannot think of anything from that. The second tool in their kitty would be to unleash the terror of load shedding indiscriminately without any major second thoughts. I guess thats the only thing that comes to their mind when they think of Demand side management ( please read http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2961150.ece to get an idea of some good demand side management ideas) I had studied bit of energy conservation and management in my UG. I was told by my prof (who happens to be a part time energy consultant) that US had around 2000 (not sure of the number) demand side energy managers, in India there were hardly a handful. We often blame the lack of investment on new power plants as the reason for our problems, but the actual issue would be the lack of initiative and creative thinking on the part of our electricity engineers and managers.

The last but not the least point is we as a public dont realize that there aint no such thing as free lunch. We have been corrupted by our political system. We just want power at low cost. We dont really bother about the quality of our power. We dnt mind the voltage fluctuations which has daunted us for years. Had we protested for those fluctuations probably the system would not have suffered as much. But we only want free power, not quality power. No wonder we have landed ourselves in such a quandary.

On the whole the entire trouble badly reflects not just on the simple issue of strategic policy failure but on our mind set. We dont want to face problems until they threaten to wipe us out, we dont want to think of new solutions , we believe that good time lasts forever and last but not the least we HATE technology.