Electricity in India

Power shortages in India affecting over half a billion people are in the news.

Quote: Electricity sector in India:Wikipedia

The per capita average annual domestic electricity consumption in India in 2009 was 96 kWh in rural areas and 288 kWh in urban areas for those with access to electricity, in contrast to the worldwide per capita annual average of 2600 kWh and 6200 kWh in the European Union.

Those numbers (even the EU numbers) seem very small to me. In the USA the EIA.gov reports average domestic use of electricity at roughly 12,000 kWh per year. I know the home I am in uses 24,000 kWh per year but it does have some serious problems.

But 95 kWh per year for rural India. That is like two of the CFL bulbs for 10 hours a day, with nothing for a fan.

Quote: pacomartin

Those numbers (even the EU numbers) seem very small to me. In the USA the EIA.gov reports average domestic use of electricity at roughly 12,000 kWh per year. I know the home I am in uses 24,000 kWh per year but it does have some serious problems.

But 95 kWh per year for rural India. That is like two of the CFL bulbs for 10 hours a day, with nothing for a fan.

India is still very, very poor per capita. I would wager many rural areas use almost nothing power-wise.

But take a look at the traffic jam, and consider if that will happen to Germany when they finally ban nukes and later fossil fuel plants?

Quote: AZDuffman

India is still very, very poor per capita. I would wager many rural areas use almost nothing power-wise.

Wikipedia says in December 2011, over 300 million Indian citizens had no access to electricity. Over one third of India's rural population lacked electricity, as did 6% of the urban population. Of those who did have access to electricity in India, the supply was intermittent and unreliable. In 2010, blackouts and power shedding interrupted irrigation and manufacturing across the country.

If anyone on this forum has a "stand-by" generator as opposed to a gasoline powered generator, I wish they would post the specifications of their unit, and any regrets things that they would do differently.

Apparently the blackouts are due to shutting down too many coal
fired plants due to environmentalists demands. So now when the
grid has any stress, it shuts down. Thats what Obama wants here,
thats why he's strangling the coal industry with more and more
regulations. No nukes, no coal, we're supposed to put our dogs
on treadmills to produce electricity, I guess.