>Indian Power Industry - Current Scenario and Opportunities Ahead

Generation
India has the fifth largest generation capacity in the world with an installed capacity of 152 GW as on 30 September 2009, which is about 4 percent of global power generation. The top four countries, viz., US, Japan, China and Russia together consume about 49 percent of the total
power generated globally. The average per capita consumption of electricity in India is estimated to be 704 kWh during 2008-09. However, this is fairly low when compared to that of some of the developed and emerging nations such US (~15,000 kWh) and China (~1,800 kWh). The world average stands at 2,300 kWh2. The Indian government has set ambitious goals in the 11th plan for power sector owing to which the power sector is poised for significant expansion. In order to provide availability of over 1000 units of per capita electricity by year 2012, it has been estimated that need-based capacity addition of more than 100,000 MW would be required. This has resulted in massive addition plans being proposed in the sub-sectors of Generation Transmission and Distribution.

Transmission
The current installed transmission capacity is only 13 percent of the total installed generation capacity3. With focus on increasing generation capacity over the next 8-10 years, the corresponding investments in the transmission sector is also expected to augment. The Ministry of Power plans to establish an integrated National Power Grid in the country by 2012 with close to 200,000 MW generation capacities and 37,700 MW of inter-regional power transfer capacity. Considering that the current inter-regional power transfer capacity of 20,750 MW4, this is indeed an ambitious objective for the country.

Distribution
While some progress has been made at reducing the Transmission and Distribution (T&D) losses, these still remain substantially higher than the global benchmarks, at approximately 33 percent. In order to address some of the issues in this segment, reforms have been undertaken through unbundling the State Electricity Boards into separate Generation, Transmission and Distribution units and privatization of power distribution has been initiated either through the outright privatization or the franchisee route; results of these initiatives have been somewhat mixed. While there has been a slow and gradual improvement in metering, billing and collection efficiency, the current loss levels still pose a significant challenge for distribution companies going forward.

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