For the last couple of weeks, Bangalore is under power cuts: 2-3 hours a day. Now I know that this is nothing compared to many other parts of India where it’s more like 9 to 10 hours daily. So what I say here may not really apply or make much sense if you’ve got more than, let's say 5 hours of power cut in a day. 5 hours is the maximum number for this idea to have any relevance.
At the first place, it’s even embarrassing that I’m thinking along the lines of power cut convenience instead of coming up with ways to increase our power output. But forgive me, if you will, this one time. So here’s the point, folks: there’s no power in my house every morning for one hour, every afternoon for one hour, and every evening for one hour. The trouble with this, as you know, is that power cuts usually happen when electricity is most needed. So in the end, knowing that we can’t do much about it anyways, we end up planning our work around the dark hours. Like you might take an early bath, or finish off the paper work before sunset, or any of those. And kids in school are having it tight these days with exams around the corner.
We end up scheduling our work around power cuts. How about the other way round? Why not plan the cuts around our schedule? This means, the local electricity board gives every household the option to choose which 2 or 3 hours in a day they can stay without power. These hours could be broken apart, or done in one shot. The minimum duration for a one time switch off however, can be set at say 15 minutes. So I take it that there’s the main switch and plugged in along with it is a device that records the time of power cuts initiated by the household (just like the meter records units of power consumed, or a punch card that records times of 'in' and 'out').
For example, I might decide to go out between 3 and 6 in the evening. So I might as well have the ‘power cut’ at that time. As I leave, I turn off the main and the ‘device’ records the start-time of the power cut. I’m back at 6 and turn on the mains, the device records the end-time of the power cut. A condition attached here would be that if every household is required to cut 3 hours of power per day, they do not get any additional benefits for cutting it for a longer time. Going back to the above case, suppose I leave home at 3 and I turn off the power as I leave, and return at 7, that makes it 4 hours of the power-cut. But only 3 hours were stipulated by the electricity board. Then, I don’t get to adjust the extra one hour of today by reducing one hour from another day. Cutting power for less than the stipulated hours can attract a fine leading up to disconnection in cases of regular faltering. I mean, the policies could look like this.
It strikes as a convenient and a win-win solution to a problem that's not going away anywhere in the near future. Now obviously, it’s very linearly thought out without taking a whole lot of other factors into account. But what do you think of this idea?
8 comments:
The first problem that I see with this solution is scalability. Given that Bangalore is the third most populous city, by the time people fill out the forms (which they take forever) and these are ingested and sorted out, the power consumption issue may actually be obsolete. Let us assume that this is planned in advance. The second issue I see with this is prioritization. Given that there are businesses (some probably with the promise of uninterrupted power supply), schools, hospitals and residential areas in the same place (and possibly connected to one or more common grids). Assuming that this is sorted out (using some parallel circuits), the third issue is people agreeing on a common slot. Even if the Govt. offers you only 3 choices, I am sure the distribution will be almost equal that the slot chosen will leave the remaining 66.6% unsatisfied. I am not trying to beat your suggestion down but I very much fear that implementing such a convenient solution will lead us all to not take the energy conservation issue seriously. I would think coming up with 'greener' solutions (like the Google power meter that speaks in a language people understand - money) could be the best approach, given that developed countries are already breathing down our necks (without any concern as to what they have been doing all these days !)...oh..dear, I should probably made this a post instead of a comment !
clarification: I misunderstood a part of your post, I was assuming that the Govt. will turn off a grid and I think that a couple of houses turning off the power (while the rest do not) will not help as much since they should power the plant/transformer supplying those grids in any case. But I do like the idea of a 'device' that monitors power supply - exactly the idea behind google power meter.
SG:
The govt. (as far as possible) will not/should not sink it's teeth into any grid. They can continue the uninterrupted supply of elec. to hospitals/factories so on. Only the houses will be controlled at an individual level.
And this is very true: but I very much fear that implementing such a convenient solution will lead us all to not take the energy conservation issue seriously. I would think coming up with 'greener' solutions.
I'm more thinking of this as a temp. soln. while we scout for green tech.
The first question is, why is the power cut happening?
If my guess is correct in that the power cuts are happening to save power/ reduce power usage, your "I go out from 3pm to 6pm and will cut power for that time" kind of totally defeats the purpose. Your lights are anyway going to be off etc etc, and the current company isn't really saving a lot. However, if they take off power during the times the usage is at its peak, they tend to save more.
It's like saying "I don't like watching advertisements, so I will have the advertisements on TV play from 1 in the night to 8 in the morning when I am not watching TV, and then the rest of the day I can watch commercial-free content" ..
Nice idea, but both SG and Hari have a point too.
Anyway, something I observed at NITJ. The new warden made a rule that those girls that came into the hostel after curfew had to pay 50 bucks fine. So what many girls did was pay the fine daily and hang out with their boyfriends till late night. Same way, if the turning of power was in our hands, many would prefer to leave it on and pay the fine later, just because they can afford to do so.
But yeah, you could look on the bright side, the power cut is only 3 hours. In the Ungra village (when I was living at ASTRA centre of IISc), we had power supply only from 7pm till 2-3am in the morning, and even lesser sometimes!
Speaking of paying off the fine, the only way I can think of is increasing the fine exponentially. In other words, you come within one hour after the curfew hour, you pay 50 but you come within two hours, you pay more and then even more, and so on with the electricity situation as well.
If, on the other hand, you want to take it one step further, you could establish incentives. For every 1 week you return to the hostel on time, you could spend the next 3 days out late. Or, ensure your power consumption is within so many watts, and you have got yourself some free electricity now.
Hari: that's a point there. power are so designed to reduce peak hour loads. But if the elec. board is more focused on the number of hours, then i think it would make more sense.
>The first question is, why is the power cut happening?
Well, that's an entirely different debate. And oh yes, the advertisements analogy is a nice one! not a bad idea eh? play 'em when you're sleeping.
Sri: When i said we'll make people payt fines, that was just an example. It's needn't be fines, or like Hari says, make them exponential. For all you know you can penalise defaulters by chopping their heads off.. who cares?
Dude Sampath here :)
Dude, i was on holiday, so cud not follow ur blog :(
This time ur post has been of public interest..good start hmmmmm.
But i have few doubts...
First one is its not all about the number of hours of load shedding (its already mentioned above by many readers)
Second, the advantage of simultaneous load shedding, when electricity is transmitted, there is energy loss/leakage in the transmission line, And there are few illegal users who hook the transmission line and misuse the electricity, the loss incurred in such cases is quite big. If there is a voluntary load shedding, then the loss will still be same. But if you go for simultaneous, there will be no flow of current at all. There would be no loss of electricity for that period of time.
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