Effects of Power Outages.

A common hurdle faced by India towards its growth factor is power outage. India is among the fastest developing countries of the world and so, it’s dependent upon the electricity sector to harness its growth. India is the third largest electricity producer and fourth largest in terms of consumption in the world. (Source) But unfortunately, an estimated 27% of the energy generated either gets lost or stolen during transmission. The peak supply falls short among 9% of the population. And what’s worse, frequent power outages last for as long as a whopping 10 hours. One of the biggest power outages that occurred in India was in the year 2012 when three grids i.e. northern, eastern and north-eastern had collapsed. This incident turned 22 states of the nation in shambles. And, this blackout wasn’t the first in that scale. The northern grid of India had fallen back in the year 2001, and the north-eastern grid blackout occurred in 2003.  The ripple effects of these incidents compelled the Indian government to take instant corrective measures.

Meghalaya, Andaman & Nicobar, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, are among states that are most affected due to power cuts. Power shortages are more prominent in Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh while Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka face minimum problems vis-à-vis electricity supply.

Power shortage has been among the most prevalent issue in India’s growth track. In fact, since 1951, India has missed every annual target to electricity production capacity, as per a Bloomberg report.

How do power outages affect the people?

§        Agriculture is a dominant factor in people’s lives in the rural areas with over 70% of the rural population depending upon electricity for irrigation, storing of allied products and sowing. Impending power outages affects rural households staggeringly.

§       Transportation system in urban life depends to a great extent upon electricity. From train services to automatic signaling system, electricity plays a major role. Power cuts do mess up the system.

§       The healthcare industry is badly disrupted by power outages. Lifesaving equipment cannot run without power and major operations stand cancelled. In such cases, DG sets are life saviors.

§         Data centers and IT industry processes come to a halt.

§       The lives of hundreds of workers in the mining industry is jeopardized.

§        Not to mention, everyday lifestyle of India’s population which is ever increasing is adversely affected in terms of computer shutdown, electrical equipment such as heaters and induction cookers fail to work and thus, productivity slows down.

How do power outages affect businesses?

§        Due to high frequency of power cuts, out of a total of 650 industries of various sizes surveyed, 61% companies face more than 10% of loss in production.

§        Infrastructure such as telecommunication networks, healthcare amenities, financial services, water supplies, transportation industry and mining companies get badly hit. The infrastructure constraints brought in by power outages in India increases the relative cost of carrying out businesses which in turn gives birth to supply side bottlenecks.

§        Frequent power outages gone unattended limit the private sector’s global competitiveness. As a result of this, fiscal conditions decelerate substantially.

§       The manufacturing industry chiefly depends upon electricity for production. Due to power cuts, machines and other multiple operations come to a standstill. This stops production from individual scale to batch scale altogether. The manufacturing sector is the backbone of India’s commercial success, and this disadvantage keeps India from making it to the top League of Nations. 

We at Mahindra Powerol offer solutions to combat these issues of Power outages. 

Visit us at www.mahindrapowerol.com to know more.