By Shri Nagendra Nath Mahapatra, Senior Consultant, OERC II Shri Manas Kumar Das, GM,Reliance Energy Trading II Miss Sandhyarani Behera, CESU with emphasis on world energy conservation day to be observed on December 12 and National Energy Conservation Day on December 14 this year.
Electric power is an important sector of National economy. Providing adequate and affordable electric power is essential for economic development, human welfare and better standard of living. Indian economy is at a crucial juncture of its evolution. In spite of massive addition in generation, transmission and distribution capacity over ten Five-year plan periods, growth in demand in power has always exceeded the generation capacity augmentation. Although the installed capacity of the country has increased from a mere 1713 MW in December, 1950 to 1,47,965 MW and the annual generation has grown from about 5 BU to 691 BU by end of March, 2009, the capacity achieved is far below the target set during various plans. Details of planned capacity addition vis-à-vis the actual capacity addition during last ten Five-year Plans and first two and half years of 11th Plan period are given in Table 1 below which pinpoints that excepting during 1st, 5th, 6th and 7th plan period, the performance hovers around 50% of the targeted capacity in other Five-year Plans.