India Blackout Leaves 300 Million Without Power | Hacker News Reader

India Blackout Leaves 300 Million Without Power

nytimes.com

19 pointsghshephard4 comments

What's interesting to me, is that this AP report http://news.yahoo.com/major-power-outage-hits-northern-india... claims that " Shivpal Singh Yadav, the power minister in the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 200 million people, said that while demand during peak hours hits 11,000 megawatts, the state can only provide 9,000 megawatts."

In comparison, California, which is known for both having marginal capacity, and being (relatively) low-user of electricity per capita (because of the mild climate) - has a population of around 38 million, and, according to CalIso, about 41,000 megawatts of generation capacity available (not all of it in California, mind you) - http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html

I think centrally air conditioning whole building takes a toll. UP is not exactly known for the riches of India. Now consider that plus the office spaces. CA has higher number of huge office spaces, UP on the other hand has more residential space and the commercial/government spaces are usually not centrally air conditioned.

That and 11k megawats is UP's demand whereas 41k is CA's generation capacity.

1. Air conditioning isn't omnipresent, even in office buildings. 2. Even if it is present, central air conditioning is rare. 3. Even if it is present, unless it is really, really scorching heat most won't turn on their ACs to save on electricity. A family of four will bunk up in a single AC room to sleep even if they have 3 rooms in their house.

> "Blackouts lasting up to eight hours a day are frequent in much of the country"

This particular blackout is only marginally worse than the situation the common Indian is already in. The situation is so bad that blackouts are a part and parcel of normal life in India. The situation does vary a lot over the country - some of the more fortunate parts enjoy an average of 23 hours of power a day. Some places have it really bad with "cuts" of 10 - 15 hrs a day not uncommon.

Power generation is not enough to satisfy the demand. This isn't because of the lack of power plants alone. The existing power plants are mismanaged and often produce less power than they are designed for because of faulty components. New power plants often get stuck with political problems.

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