Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Collapse Of India's Electrical Grid Will Have Worldwide Implications



India's Power Grid Collapses Again -- Wall Street Journal

NEW DELHI--Much of India's electricity supply network collapsed Tuesday in the country's second major outage in two days, affecting more than 680 million people—double the population of the U.S.—and causing business losses estimated to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thousands of offices and factories had to switch to generators or shut shop, more than 200 trains were brought to a standstill while hospitals had to ask nurses to manually work critical equipment such as ventilators as 21 provinces experienced a near-total blackout that raised questions about the infrastructure in Asia's third-largest economy.

Read more ....

More News On India's Power Grid Collapse

Half of India Crippled by Second Day of Power Failures -- New York Times
India power cut hits millions, among world's worst outages -- Reuters
Day Two of India's Blackout Hits Half the Population -- Bloomberg Businessweek
Second major blackout hits India -- Financial Times
More than 600 million people affected by latest blackout in India -- L.A. Times
India’s Blackout Doubles in Size, Continues into Second Day, Leaving 620 Million in the Dark -- Time/AP
Hundreds of millions without power in India -- BBC

My Comment: When I was living in China in 1988 .... power failures were a nuisance that everyone knew had to be solved in order for China to become a major economic world player. The same can be said about India today ..... but this blackout should not surprise those who are familiar with India. India .... like China .... is heavily dependent on coal fired plants to provide electricity. But unlike China .... India has closed coal mines and is trying to divert to alternative energy sources. They obviously did not realize (or calculate) that shutting down these coal-fired generators may have some consequences .... which we are now seeing today. I do expect India to solve this problem .... and they will do it by opening more coal mines and coal powered plants. If CO2 release and global warming is your thing .... this should concern you.

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