1. Electricity
    1. The Electricity Act,2003
    2. Central Electricity Authority (CEA),
    3. PSU under Power Ministry
    4. Statutory bodies under Power Ministry
    5. Ultra Mega Power Project Initiatives
    6. National Grid
    7. Nuke Sites in India
    8. Hydropower
    9. North-East: power problems
    10. Rural Electrification
    11. RGGVY
    12. Private sector participation
    13. Finance
      1. IREDA
      2. POWER FINANCE CORPORATION
      3. PXI
      4. Rural Electrification Corporation
      5. National Clean Energy Fund
      6. National Electricity Fund
    14. 12th FYP: Electricity
  2. Renewable energy
    1. Bagasse Cogeneration
    2. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission
    3. National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency
    4. National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative
    5. Solar cities
    6. Ladakh Renewable Energy Initiative
    7. C-WET
    8. Renewable Energy: Challenges
    9. Chindu’s Budget speech
    10. Share of renewable energy
  3. URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE
    1. JNNURM
    2. PEARL
    3. IRMA
    4. CVTC
  4. Mock Questions

Electricity

When Where?
1897 First hydel power station @Darjeeling
1899 First thermal power plant @Calcutta
1969 First nuke plant, Tarapur, MH
  • Electricity= is a concurrent subject (List III of the seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India.)
  • 100% FDI permitted in electricity generation, transmission and distribution and trading.

The Electricity Act,2003

  • Electricity generation has been delicensed. (recall the activities that require industrial license)
  • Although Hydro projects need concurrence from the Central Electricity Authority.
  • No license required for generation and distribution in rural areas.
  • Setting up of the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs) made mandatory.
  • An Appellate Tribunal to hear appeals against the decision of the CERC and SERCs.
  • Electricity  must be supplied via Meters
  • Penalty for power theft = increased
  • Established Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to prepare a National Electricity Plan.

Central Electricity Authority (CEA),

  • a statutory organization constituted under Electricity Act,2003 (administrative control under Power Ministry)
  • advises the Central Government on matters relating to the National Electricity Policy,
  • aims to provide reliable and affordable electricity to all consumers.
  • makes regulations/standards on matters
    • construction of electrical plans,
    • electric lines and meters
    • connectivity to the grid,
    • concurrence of hydro-electric schemes
  • The CEA is responsible for the concurrence of hydro power development schemes of the Central,State and Private sectors..
  • Studies for the optimum location of dams and other river works.

PSU under Power Ministry

  • National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC),
  • National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC),
  • North-Eastern Electric Power Corporation
  • Power Grid Corporation of India Limited.(=the formation of the National Power Grid.
  • Two joint-venture power corporations,
    • Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (Himachal)
    • Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (Uttarakhand)

Statutory bodies under Power Ministry

  1. Damodar Valley Corporation
  2. Bhakra-Beas Management Board
  3. Bureau of Energy Efficiency

Ultra Mega Power Project Initiatives

  • By Ministry of Power
  • for development of coal-based super critical Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPP)
  • Each having capacity of ~4000 MW.

UMPP project

State
  1. Sasan
 Madhya Pradesh
  1. Mundra
 Gujarat
  1. Krishnapatnam
 Andhra Pradesh
  1. Tilaiya
 Jharkhand
  • 12 more supercritical UMPPs are being planned covering Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
  • Challenge: some of these projects are plagued with uncertainties regarding fuel supply because they were based on imported coal and changes in government policies in the countries.

National Grid

  • An integrated power transmission grid helps to even out supply-demand mismatches.
  • Only the southern grid is yet to be connected to the rest of the system(likely to be completed by January 2014.)
  • Once this is achieved, all the five regional grids will operate as a single system in synchronous mode. This will be the largest single such system in the world, both in terms of the grid size and system capacity of around 200000 MW

Trading and Open access in electricity sector

  • for allowing a buyer to choose the supplier and a seller to choose the buyer.
  • 2008: Central Electricity Regulatory Commission [CERC] Regulations have provided for Open Access in Inter-State Transmission.
  • via electricity traders and power exchanges
  • It optimizes generation resources by facilitating trade and flow of electricity across the country.
  • The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission CERC has granted 61 inter-state trading licences

For more, visit the grid failure article: click me

Nuke Sites in India

Including proposed / under construction

Kovvada Andhra Pradesh
Kakrapar Gujarat
Mithi-Virdi Gujarat
Gorakhpur Haryana
Kaiga Karnataka
Chutka Madhya Pradesh
Tarapur Maharashtra
Jaitapur Maharashtra
Rawatbhata Rajasthan
Banswada Rajasthan
Kudankulam Tamil Nadu
Kalpakkam Tamil Nadu
Narora Uttar Pradesh
Haripur West Bengal

Hydropower

  • India’s hydroelectric potential is ~1.45lakh MW.
  • ^As per the study carried by Central Electricity Authority (CEA)
  • A major part of the unexploited potential is in North-East and Himalayan regions. With the deployment of latest technologies we can harness the remaining potential without damaging the ecology. (12th FYP aims to do so).

North-East: power problems

  • North-East has very large potential for producing hydro power but the pace of implementation has been poor.
  • entire capacity has to be evacuated through a narrow strip of about 25 km in West Bengal.
  • Although no forest clearance is needed, but land acquisition =problem.
  • number of hydro power plants coming up in the region, especially in Arunachal Pradesh, is expected to be spread over the Twelfth and Thirteenth Plans
  • but the distribution system is inadequate and consequently leads to large power losses.

Coop with neighbors

  • Integration of Indian electricity grid with countries such as Bhutan and Nepal
    •  = optimization of electricity resources on a large scale and
    • + opportunities to sell and buy electricity.
  • An electric grid interconnection between India and Bangladesh through a Berhampur (India)– Bheramara (Bangladesh) is being developed for facilitating exchange of power up to 500 MW between the two countries.

Rural Electrification

Rural electrification is one of the six components of Bharat Nirman

RGGVY

  • 2005: Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) was launched
  • Objectives
  1. Create rural electricity infrastructure
  2. Provide electricity to all rural households
  3. provide free of cost connection to Below poverty line (BPL) households.
Finance per project From
90% Subsidy
10% Loan by Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) (under power ministry)

RGGVY: problem/challenge

  • RGGVY focuses only on house-hold supply and does not address the needs for providing electricity for small industries and agriculture, which need three-phase supply.
  • RGGVY only covers last mile connectivity to households but doesn’t strengthening of the rural network (for 3-phase supply).
  • States are often unable to invest in such projects.
  • For effective electricity universal access, the RGGVY programme will restructured in 12th FYP.

Private sector participation

  • experience of privatisation in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Surat shows that transmission and distribution losses can be reduced, network efficiency increased, and service levels improved
  • The Franchise model is now being expanded to Nagpur, Aurangabad, Jalgaon in Maharashtra and Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

Finance

IREDA
  • Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency
  • For market development and financing of renewable energy projects
  • Under ministry of new and renewable energy

POWER FINANCE CORPORATION
  • a public sector Non-Banking  Financial Company
  • to provide fund and non-fund based support to Indian power sector.
  • Has established Power lender’s club: made up of 18 banks + financial institutions like LIC and HUDCO.
  • Under power ministry

PXI
  • Power exchange India ltd
  • Company promoted by NSE and others.

Rural Electrification Corporation
  • For rural electrification
  • Rajiv Gandhi Vidhuytikaran Yojana financed via this.
  • Under power ministry

National Clean Energy Fund
  • for funding research and innovative projects in clean energy technology.
  • Money collected via cess on coal (both domestic and imported.)
  • Matter falls under Ministry of New and Renewable Energy

National Electricity Fund
  • provide interest subsidy to the State Power Utilities – both in public and private sector,
  • to improve the electricity distribution network.

12th FYP: Electricity

  • 11th FYP initially wanted capacity addition of 78,000 MW and Out of that,
    • ~20% from Hydro
    • ~75% from thermal
    • And remaining from nuclear energy.
  • But in reality only ~55000 MW has been achieved during the Eleventh Plan.
  • Now 12th FYP wants additional ~88,000 MW.

Renewable energy

Bagasse Cogeneration

  • This is a renewable energy source.
  • Bagasse= fibrous matter that remains after juice is extracted from sugarcane.
  • Cogeneration= process of using a single fuel to produce more than one form of energy in sequence.
  • In Bagasse cogeneration: output = Heat (use by the sugar mill for production) + electricity (sold to consumers).
  • In normal electricity generation plants, up to 70% of heat in steam is rejected to the atmosphere. But In cogeneration plant, this heat is not wasted and is instead used to meet process heating requirement.

Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission

  • 2010: Launched under National plan on climate change
  • Falls under ministry of new and renewable energy
  • To achieve following things by 2022
  1. install 20GW solar power
  2. 2 GW of off-grid Solar
  3. 20 million sq. metre of solar thermal collector area
  4. 20 million rural households to have solar lighting

The mission will be implemented in three phases.

Phase Till March
First 2013
Second 2017
Third 2022

National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency

  • 2009: launched
  • Under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change
  • Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) (under Power Ministry) as the Mission implementing agency

Objective/activates

by 2015, help save about 5% of our annual energy consumption, and nearly 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year

PAT mechanism and ESCert

  • Perform, Achieve and Trade” (PAT) mechanism
  • It would assign energy efficiency improvement targets to the country’s most energy-intensive industrial units
  • If they overachieve targets, they’ll be given Energy Savings Certificates, called ESCerts.
  • Other companies can buy those ESCerts to meet their targets.

Finance

  • Government will give guarantees to banks for loans to energy-efficiency projects.
  • Venture Capital Fund to support investment in the manufacturing of energy-efficient products and services.

Misc. initiatives

National Institute of Solar Energy development in solar energy including solar hybrid areas
National Bioenergy Corporation of India to implement bioenergy mission including cook stove programme
Renewable Energy Development Fund Provide financing for the grid connected as well as the off-grid projects of renewable energy.

National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative

  • for development for 5500 biomass community cookstoves in Anganwadis, Mid-day meal schemes in schools, Tribal Hostels, etc.
  • and for 15,000.of family sized/portable cookstove has been taken up.
  • This initiative would provide a basis for taking up a large sized cook stove programme.
  • The World’s largest system for cooking in community kitchen has been installed at Shirdi in Maharashtra to cook food for 20,000 people per day and is saving around 60,000 kg of LPG every year.

Solar cities

  • By Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
  • Upto Rs. 50 lakhs given per city.
  • to support/encourage Urban Local Bodies

Activities/objectives

  1. minimum 10% reduction in projected demand of conventional energy and increasing energy production through renewable energy.
  2. promoting solar water heating systems in homes, hotels, hostels, hospitals and industry; deploying Solar Photo Voltaic(SPV) systems/devices in urban areas for demonstration
  3. establishing Akshya Urja Shops
  4. promoting urban and industrial waste/ biomass to energy projects
  5. all types of renewable energy based projects like solar, wind, biomass, small hydro, waste to energy etc. will be installed

Following three are being developed as model solar cities

  1. Nagpur
  2. Chandigarh
  3. Gandhinagar

Ladakh Renewable Energy Initiative

  • by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
  • to minimize dependence on diesel in the Ladakh region
  • to meet power requirement through local renewable resources.
  • Via small/micro hydel and solar photovoltaic power projects/systems + use solar thermal systems for water heating/space heating/ cooking requirements.

C-WET

  • Centre for Wind Energy Technology
  • an autonomous organisation @Chennai, TN
  • under administrative control of this Ministry

Renewable Energy: Challenges

Regional Concentration

  • Renewable energy sources are location-specific and not evenly distributed
  • Hence problem to connect them to a grid. For example
Type Confined to
Wind energy Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Small hydro Himalayan States and north-eastern State

Expensive

  1. Renewable power, especially solar, is significantly costlier than conventional power
  2. Renewable energy technologies require large initial capital investments

Low Penetration

Many State governments have not yet made building-regulation codes that encourage use of solar water heaters etc.

Storage

  • Globally, development of (electricity) storage technologies has not been in line with the technology developments in wind and solar,
  • This leads to poor capacity utilization

Chindu’s Budget speech

  • India tosses out several thousand tonnes of garbage each day.
  • We will evolve a scheme to encourage cities and municipalities to take up waste-to-energy projects in PPP mode.
  • Government  will provide low interest funds from National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF) to IREDA
  • Then IREDA will lend it to renewable energy projects.
  • +800 crores to Ministry of Non Renewable Energy for wind energy projects.

Share of renewable energy

Period % Share of renewable energy in total electricity generated
2011-12 7%
2016-17* 12%
2020* 15%

*National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC) wants this.

12th FYP aims to add 30,000 MW renewable power capacity

Sidenotes

  • Biofuel related matters falls under Ministry of new and renewable energy
  • Tidal energy Potential sites (in descending order of capacity): Gulf of Cambay > Gulf of Kutch >Sundarban region (West Bengal.)

URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE

JNNURM

  • Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM)
  • was launched by the Ministry of Urban Development for a seven-year period (i.e. from 2005 up to March 2012)
  • to encourage cities to initiate steps for bringing improvements in a phased manner in their civic service levels.
  • This mission has been extended for two years, i.e. from 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2014.

Assistance is given for

  • water supply and preservation (including desalination plants),
  • sanitation, sewerage and solid waste management and storm drains
  • development of heritage areas
  • Parking lots on PPP basis
  • And urban transport including expressway, highway, Metro, BRTS

Urban Transport

  • bus rapid transit system (BRTS) were approved for Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Indore, Jaipur, Pune-Pimpri-Chinchwad, Rajkot, Surat, Vijayawada, Vishakhapatnam, and Kolkata under the JNNURM

PEARL

  • Peer Experience and reflective learning (PEARL) program
  • for knowledge and experience sharing between JNNURM project cities
  • coordinated by National institute of urban affairs

IRMA

  • IRMA= Institute of Rural Management Anand
  • Although for the purpose of JNNURM, IRMA= independent review and monitoring agency (IRMA) = for monitoring the progress of JNNURM projects in states.

CVTC

  • City volunteer technical corps
  • Professionally qualified persons in sector of urban planning, urban governance, legal, finance, engineering etc.
  • They help in JNNURM projects by advising, awareness generation, ensuring accountability etc.

Mock Questions

  1. Correct Statements
    1. Electricity is a state subject
    2. In Electricity generation, FDI limit is 51%
    3. Both
    4. None
  2. Incorrect Match (UMPP vs State)
    1. Tilaiya: Jharkhand
    2. Sasan: Gujarat
    3. Kirhsnapatnam: Andhra
    4. None of Above
  3. Incorrect statement about Ultra Mega Power project initiative (UMPP)
    1. It aims to explore and exploit the hydel power potential of North Eastern State
    2. under Ministry of Power
    3. Both
    4. None
  4. Correct Match
    1. Kovvada: TN
    2. Rawatbhata:Maharashtra
    3. Chutka: MP
    4. None of above
  5. Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana
    1. aims to fullfil one of the objective of Bharat Nirman
    2. provides free of cost electrical connections to all rural households
    3. Both
    4. None
  6. What is the purpose of National electricity fund?
    1. improve electricity distribution network
    2. fund research in clean energy technologies.
    3. Both
    4. None
  7. Rural Electrification Corporation is falls under
    1. Ministry of new and renewable energy
    2. Ministry of Rural Development
    3. Ministry of Power
    4. None of above
  8. Correct statements about Cogeneration
    1. it is a process of using single fuel to produce multiple forms of energy in sequence.
    2. Bagasse cogeneration is a non-renewable energy source
    3. Both
    4. None
  9. What is the commercially beneficial output in Bagasse Cogeneration?
    1. Heat
    2. Electricity
    3. both
    4. None
  10. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission
    1. is a part of National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency
    2. implemented by Bureau of energy efficiency
    3. will be completed in 2020
    4. None of above
  11. which of the following is/are part of National action plan on climate change?
    1. National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency
    2. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission
    3. Both
    4. None
  12. What is ESCert?
    1. E-security certificate issued under IT security act
    2. E-securities and share certificates issued by certain mutual fund companies
    3. Energy savings certificates issued under National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency
    4. None of above
  13. Incorrect statements about Solar cities scheme
    1. Nagpur is being developed as one of the model solar city
    2. Provides assistance not only for solar projects, but also for biomass, wind energy etc. projects in the selected city.
    3. It is being implemented by Ministry of Environment and Forest
    4. All of above
  14. Correct statement about JNNURM
    1. Project has expired in 2012
    2. It doesn’t provide assistance for Development of heritage sites in the given city.
    3. It provides assistance for urban transport projects except metro projects.
    4. None of Above
  15. Peer Experience and reflective learning (PEARL) program is part of
    1. National knowledge network
    2. National Youth Corps
    3. JNNURM
    4. None of above