India suffers world's biggest power outage - ABC Online

ASHLEY HALL: It's been described as the world's biggest power outages.

A massive power failure yesterday in India blacked out more than half the country.

More than 600 million people were left without power.

Hundreds of miners were trapped underground, trains stopped on their tracks, and businesses ground to a halt.

Indians are well used to power outages. There was a similar but smaller blackout on Monday.

But it's causing huge embarrassment for a nation that promotes itself as a powerhouse of economic growth.

Massoud Amin is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota, who was a key player in the effort to secure US infrastructure in the aftermath of 9/11.

And he's studied India's power system first-hand.

MASSOUD AMIN: You know, India, given that 25 per cent comes from hydro dams and this year they have had a relatively low rainfall - that may be part of that problem.

The other part is we become interconnected. We connect different regions really to help each other out. When one area is low, the other areas compensate, and as long as we have sufficient high voltage transmission, you can bring power from one region to another.

Except the infrastructure itself is an aging infrastructure with the demand growing in India, with the hi-tech growing in India, economic growth, similar to other parts of the world. Brazil has the same type of situation in the sense of they're upgrading their grid,

China has done it on the Eastern Interconnection. In North America we are facing similar situations, not quite as adverse or as extreme.

And what mix of generation do you incentivise or do you build in order to have a risk managed, long term strategic approach to economic growth enabled by electricity?

ASHLEY HALL: We've identified one of what I think are the three elements there to India's power problems, and that is one around infrastructure. The other one that you touched on before was around coal.

And The New York Times reports at the end of March, there were 32 power plants which had coal stocks described as critical, that's less than seven days supply on hand, and the bill for importing coal is mounting. How sustainable is India's reliance on coal?

MASSOUD AMIN: Fifty-seven per cent of electricity comes from coal. Do you have the rail to actually transport the coal - and India has upgraded its rail system. But there are typically very few mines and sources available.

So this type of infrastructure are typically dependent, highly dependent on, I call it from end to end, from fuel source to the end use, that systems, if you will, this whole system from end to end often doesn't have sufficient shock absorptions in it.

It's a business issue. Ends up being, how do we increase the efficiency without compromising the reliability and security of the system.

ASHLEY HALL: The third element that you've identified is the amount of theft from the grid. I think you described some streets in some cities is like spaghetti junctions with the number of people who were stealing power from the grid.

How big a problem is it and how do you combat that?

MASSOUD AMIN: Losses in transmission distribution in the big wire and in the smaller wires is about 10 per cent losses or at most 15 per cent losses.

India, in some states experience as much as 50 per cent because of theft and because of corruption by employees in the power industry, and some of it is actually individuals that are actually wiring it. That's a source of concern and that can add up to about 50 per cent.

So it makes the operation of the system a challenge.

ASHLEY HALL: Should the national grid be privatised? Would it be more efficient, would it spread more quickly if it was in the hands of private operators?

MASSOUD AMIN: As long as you can have a body that can decide on what's the public good and what level of investment is required, that can be set up as a public/private infrastructure bank and with investments.

Because otherwise we are faced with the - in the west especially - with what we call NIMBY - not in my backyard - or BANANA - build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.

And then the cost also - how do you justify a return on investment if there is a cloud of uncertainty as a private venture? Can you invest in infrastructure when you're uncertain with how your infrastructure is going to be managed?

In many developing parts of the world also you invest in an infrastructure in the middle of the night, you leave it, and people come and cut the wires, the copper. In Africa I witnessed that unfortunately.

So it's not as simple as one way I'm swinging the pendulum from the public sector to private sector. I think accountability, transparency and monitoring of the system are absolutely essential.

ASHLEY HALL: The University of Minnesota's professor of electrical engineering, Massoud Amin.