BANGALORE: India would achieve the energy security target to generate one lakh MW of power by 2009, or even earlier, and "power for all " by 2012 could become a reality much earlier, Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said here today.

Inaugurating the Central Power Research Institute's Centre for Collaborative and Advanced Research and the Centre for Industrial Solid Waste Utilisation, Mr. Shinde said the current Five Year Plan had already seen 37,000 MW added to generation capacity, and the shortage existed mainly because many States were still not generating adequate power. A growth rate of 8 to 10 per cent was not a difficult target to achieve, he said, and held up the revival of Maharashtra's Dhabol power plant under a new name ahead of schedule on April 30 as an indication of this.

He said it was heartening to note that CPRI, established in 1960 by the Union Government to aid Indian manufacturers develop new products, had helped the industry significantly in becoming self-reliant in technology. CPRI's state-of-the-art testing and certification facilities for electrical equipment and the top-of-the-line research and development facilities had helped meet the ever-growing demand from the power sector, he said.

Mr. Shinde said energy was a key indicator of economic development and India currently faced peak load shortages of around 12 per cent and energy shortage of eight per cent. "What the country requires is not energy per se, but the services that energy provides," he said and suggested that integrated planning and demand management, including active promotion of efficiency in electricity use should be made central to our energy strategy," he said.

Power saving

Bangalore North MP H.T. Sangliana highlighted the need to start energy saving at home, and said in the 36 years of his career as a policeman, he had always insisted that prudent use would save power. "Wherever I was posted, I used to make it a rule that lights should not be switched on as long as day light is available, or fans used only when necessary," he said. "I don't know how much power I saved in all this time, but it pains me to see that today, the streetlights are burning long before sunset, and in Parliament, I wrote to the Speaker telling him that during the session, all the lights, every air-conditioner is in use, and he must do something about it." The Speaker issued a circular advising a more prudent use, but Mr. Sangliana was still a disappointed man because it was followed more in the breach.

The Centre for Industrial Solid Waste Utilisation has been established at a cost of Rs. 4.3 crore to showcase some of the technologies available for utilisation of industrial solid waste. Apart from characterising industrial solid wastes, the centre has been actively developing and transferring commercially viable technologies for eco-sustenance.

The Centre for Collaborative and Advanced Research built at a cost of Rs. 4.75 crore has been conceptualised to provide support for collaborative research and meet R&D needs of the power sector, particularly the scientific community.

Power transmission technologies, power distribution technologies, power system simulation studies and modelling, automation of transmission and distribution and energy audit and conservation, are some of the areas of focus at the centre, according to the CPRI chairman and director-general A.K. Tripathy said.

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