Successive governments have been saying that due to shortage in electricity generation capacity, the society is facing deficits, and hence generation capacity needs continuous additon. How true are such statements? Let us look at Karnataka's scenario.
The total available power capacity in Karnataka as on 28.2.2006 was 7,767 MW. The peak demand shortage in the state during the period April 2005 to March 2006 was 602 MW (9.8%) against the assumed demand of 6,160 MW, and the energy shortage was 251 MU (0.74%) against the assumed demand of 34,578 MU. From the total availability of 7,767 MW, even if we allow for 20 % capacity outages, a peak demand of 6,200 MW could have been comfortably met. For similar reasons the energy shortage of less than 1% could have been easily avoided. The actual reasons for the continuous shortage we have been experiencing is due to the gross inefficiency of operation of the electricity supply companies. It will not be an exaggeration to indicate that the overall efficiency of the electricity industry in Karnataka including generation, transmission, distribution and utilisation is not much more than 30%, whereas it can improve to more than 60%.
The impact of such massive inefficiency is that a lot of publc money is being invested in additional generating capacity without optimising the use of existing facilities, which is a huge burden on the society. In this regard, Karnataka govt's announcements to add 4,000 MW of additional generating capacity based on conventional energy sources (largely coal based) in next few years, should be a matter of great concern to the entire state. For a state having no known reserve of fossil fuels, to spend horrendous amounts of money to build coal based power stations without implementing all the efficiency improvement and Demand Side Management measures, will be a huge wastage of our meager resources.
The following news item on Maharastra should be a guide as to how we can harness the benign renewable energy sources without polluting the environment.

Power hungry govt will spend Rs 28,000 cr

Our public is interested to know from the state govt. as to why the much more simpler options of efficiency improvement and Demand Side Management measures have not been optimised in the state to start with.