Rahul Tongia

Review of the book named Grid Security and Management.

India’s present installed capacity, 1,62,366.80 MW excluding captive power, allows for a modest per capita consumption of some 800 kWh/capita (CSTEP’s estimate). The mix is dominated by coal, which is only 53% of the capacity but higher when it comes to generation. The generation is insufficient to meet the demand, resulting in a shortfall of both peak capacity as well as energy overall (officially 12.6% and 9.9%, respectively). There is a large push towards increasing supply, with an aim of tripling capacity in the coming 1-2 decades.

IEEE Smart Grid: What the Smart Grid Means and Does not Mean for India

There are no easy answers to India's quest for energy security with environmental sustainability. The electric power sector appears to be more  manageable, given India's thrust in nuclear power. The coming decades might see large additions in nuclear power generation capacity without
significantly increasing the CO2 emissions. The Indo-US nuclear agreement provides an opportunity to import LWRs and gives India time to commercialize the FBR and thorium-based reactors. At the same time, it will help to reduce India's dependence on coal to some extent.

India's diesel consumption is several times that of petrol In this article, we examine two options for meeting India's diesel demand: coal to liquids and bio-diesel Coal gasification, followed by Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis offers an opportunity for large-scale production of diesel as proven by South Africa, and now being attempted by China and Qatar. India could consider this option given its large coal reserves.

In this report, we examine current and proposed IT initiatives being undertaken by HESCOM, and suggest changes in the technology design as well as a roadmap for IT initiatives. The focus is not on technology details but high-level design and integration of these into the business processes and institutional frameworks of the utility. This effort is mindful of and compatible with R-APDRP initiatives, including those by the Empanelled IT Consultants.

The study of networks and network science has grown in the last decade, but most network models fail to capture the costs or loss of value of exclusion from the network. Intuitively, as a network grows in size and value, those outside the network face growing disparities. This new direction is relevant too for the design of policy interventions as well as for shifting the scholarly research agenda toward greater focus on inequality and exclusion.

This paper introduces a framework to examine the relative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different information and communications technologies to deliver a range of social services, using a case example of rural Bangladesh. It focuses particularly on major sectors such as agriculture, education, disaster response and healthcare. A Community based radio broadcasting (CR) appears as the dominant option among the considered ICTs. Human intervention has been found to be crucial in both low (20%) and medium-high (60%) literacy populations.

The urgent power system needs in India are not necessarily the same as those in advanced industralised countries.The same goes for the most important power system constraints.Generally, not all smart grid technologies are equally relavent worldwide. In India,the really useful technologies will be those that constrain peak demand and peak load growth at reasonable cost while cutting losses.

The study of networks has grown recently, but most existing models fail to capture the costs or loss of value of exclusion from the network. Intuitively, as a network grows in size and value, those outside the network face growing disparities. We present a new framework for modeling network exclusion, showing that costs of exclusion can be absolute, and might, at the extreme, eventually grow exponentially, regardless of underlying network structure.