Current Affairs Classes Pre cum Mains 2025, Batch Starts: 11th September 2024 Click Here for more information
Context:
- Instead of transmitting electricity to the farmers, the government, to start with, wants farmers to use solar energy to power their irrigation pumps.
What is in news?
- According to the January 2018 report of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, there are about 142,000 solar pumps in India.
- The government is planning to install one million solar pumps by 2021.
Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (KUSUM):
- The Union Budget 2018 has allocated close to Rs. 48,000 crore to set up the Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (KUSUM).
- This programme will help set up more than 28 GW of combined solar capacity through these solar pumps.
- The government plans to purchase the surplus power through electricity distribution companies.
- This proposal will almost certainly increase agricultural incomes and reduce electricity losses when transmitting power to remote rural areas.
- The advantage of this scheme is that transmission losses and power theft would drop significantly.
- The feasibility of purchasing surplus solar power seems problematic.
- There is a need to address the issue of grid stability that this injection of surplus power is bound to create.
Loss of rural retailers of power:
- Most rural retailers of power also lose money as they sell power at a subsidised rate to the poor and the farm sector.
- The state-run distribution companies were thus running a loss of Rs. 4.3 trillion as of September 2015.
- Local generation of power in the manner proposed would take care of the above issues.
Balancing of power grids:
- All power grids require balancing.
- This balancing entails meeting the demand with adequate supply 24×7 to ensure there is no blackout.
- The reason for striking this balance is that electrical energy cannot readily be stored, meaning that power generation ought to work round the clock.
- These electrical gridlines were created to depend on reliable and controllable generators (coal, oil and even hydroelectric).
- However, with more and more power being generated through fluctuating power generators (solar and wind), a more precise balance will have to be created, which may cause more failures.
Way ahead:
- India is short of power; thus, while other nations see solar and wind power as an energy management problem, India also sees this as a capacity management problem.
