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Journalism of Courage
Now when you have a power cut, look west and see the bright side: it is a learning experience for America. Shaken by the recent blackout that sent their entire infrastructure into a tailspin, US authorities have sought India’s help in management of such crises. The reason is obvious. There is no one in the world who comes even close to us when it comes to handling collapsing power grids.
We used to have on an average one grid collapse every six months till some years ago. This has been brought down to the current level of once every 18 months. Enough material for William Massey, Commissioner with the US Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC), to soak in while he was in the Capital a few weeks back meeting Indian officials.
And they say the US is not the first country to seek India’s expertise in the field. ‘‘We have had visits from other countries like Japan and China also in the past for similar reasons,’’ says chairman of the public-sector Power Grid Corporation Ltd (PGCIL) R.P. Singh.
He was among the officials FERC Commissioner Massey met last week, apart from senior Power Ministry officials, to discuss how best to avoid emergencies arising out of power failures, and more importantly how best to revive a failed grid. Next week Singh is expected to make presentations to the US Department of Energy, USAID and the FERC in the US to share India’s experiences in the field.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Singh said: ‘‘While automation is good, we still do it the hard way in India. We have people manning our load despatch and simultaneous central grid monitoring 24 hours of the day. This way any load disparities that can lead to a grid collapse can be noticed immediately and failures can be averted with timely intervention.’’
Indian states are known to overstep their power allocations by drawing more from the grid as and when the need arises, sometimes on account of demand from farmers or sometimes during peak winters. It is here where human intervention, to ask states to cut the power that they are drawing, comes in handy. ‘‘Countries like the US which depend on largescale automation do not have back up physical monitoring, which could be a gap in their systems planning,’’ explains Singh. He plans to present before the US agencies a detailed proposal on how to restructure their power sector in a way to manage changing load requirements of areas, systems planning to provide for human intervention, and effective running of Load Despatch Centres where central monitoring of a grid can be done to keep an eye on the grid. ‘‘But most important, we can share how to get a failed grid back on the rails in the shortest possible time, which is the area where we have achieved great success,’’ Singh says.
The last time India had a major grid failure was on January 2, 2002, when the entire northern grid collapsed, plunging a large part of north India into darkness. At the time, partial functioning of the grid was achieved within a few hours.
