India's Power Grid? Let's Cut the Crap and get Real!

It is no mystery to most people who follow the news that India suffered two massive power outages last week. But what is less well understood, is that large parts of India's population suffers power outages on a regular basis.

India's power generation infrastructure is woefully undersized and inadequate for the growing customer base. Government regulation of the power industry makes it very difficult for producers to operate profitably. And getting anything done in India -- in terms of new infrastructure or power generation -- involves navigating a treacherous obstacle course through the many inevitably corrupt levels of India's governments.

Here more on the dark reality:

...power failures are a daily occurrence for [most] of the population—or at least the two-thirds of India's 1.2-billion inhabitants who actually have any electricity supply. But they are not for India's elite. For the latter, power guarantees power. The bureaucrats in charge of Delhi's grids switch off the supply to hospitals before they plunge the homes of top politicians into darkness. But this time the lights did go off. And so the residents of the most upmarket parts of the city—so confident of their power supplies that they do not have generators—had to sit in the fetid monsoon temperatures of 35 degrees like everyone else.

The north Indian power failure, possibly the biggest in the history of mankind, affected an estimated 700-million people. It was a global news story. It revealed the parlous state of Indian infrastructure and provided a dramatic example of how public institutions have failed to keep pace with economic growth. And it also revealed quite to what degree the conclusion, so deeply rooted in the West, that India is not only "shining" but will only get progressively shinier, is complacent in the extreme.

...it is increasingly difficult to reconcile the optimism surrounding India with the reality. In a recent book surveying the developing world, analyst and investment banker Ruchir Sharma says that India has, at best, only a 50% chance of becoming what he calls "a break-out nation". A reversal of recent fortunes is also a possibility, he argues. Other countries have suffered decline after a period of rapid growth. But this thought barely appears to have occurred to Western policymakers. Few stop to interrogate the narrative of inevitable, inexorable Indian success. Take, for example, the famous Indian "middle class". If defined in Western terms, as people with salaried jobs, a car, the odd overseas holiday and an apartment or even house, then Indians fitting this category cannot number more than a couple of percent of the population at best. A local definition, given to me by a young man in a cheap restaurant, are those who can afford a cup of coffee. The cappuccino-sippers are infinitesimally few, albeit more numerous every year.

...if other countries can live with a few slow periods, India cannot. Stasis is not an option. Hundreds of millions of young people will be pouring on to the labour market in coming years. They will need to find homes and healthcare as well as jobs. Most have been only partially educated in substandard establishments.

They suffer a grave lack of skills. More than a third will have been malnourished when infants. Horrific gender imbalances due to the pre-or post-natal killing of girls will mean a serious shortage of partners for young males.

Driving through the poor, if improving state of Bihar, on a late summer evening a year ago, the sight in every town I passed through, of large numbers of young men, some evidently drunk, out on the streets in the gathering dusk, brought home quite how easily India's "demographic dividend" could turn out to be the opposite. In worst-case scenarios, the consequence of a combination of tens of millions of people with unrealistically high aspirations, deteriorating prospects of improvement and a consistently mediocre standard of living will be high levels of social unrest. _Mail&Guardian (*irony alert!)

* The "irony alert" refers to the source for this story, South African newspaper Mail & Guardian. South Africa is certainly in no position to lecture India about corruption, a youth population with "a grave lack of skills," or power outages.

Of course the problem of a lack of skills is not unique to the third world or to emerging nations. The grand educational experiment in social justice and equality (government schools and the push for all school children to eventually go to university) for much of the developed world, has eliminated much of the general competencies for most graduates (and dropouts).

So even the developed world suffers a shortage of competent workers, while it hires PhDs to drive taxis and to mop floors.

And the power grid and infrastructure that modern green rulers of the developed world yearn for: smart grids powered by big wind and big solar? Such a system would be an eternal nightmare for grid managers and industrial customers -- to say nothing of the average power consumer.

India has a very difficult road ahead. But even the developed world is digging a deep energy hole and competency hole for itself.

The best advice for western voters, come the next local and national elections, may be to pull out the long knives (metaphorically speaking). The privileged political, media, and academic classes may not understand the dire nature of modern decline until they are forced to see many heads roll (metaphorically speaking), over and over again.

More: Details behind India's dramatic grid collapse

Half of India Goes Dark

"Even before we could figure out the reason for yesterday's failure, we had more grid failures today," said R. N. Nayak, chairman of the state-run Power Grid Corporation. _Reuters

Reuters_via_TheGWPF

India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. Electric crematoria stopped operating, some with bodies half burnt, power officials said. Emergency workers rushed generators to coal mines to rescue miners trapped underground. _AP

A modern power infrastructure requires constant upkeep, maintenance, and piece by piece replacement, as various parts inevitably break down and go bad. If a nation -- even a nation of over 1 billion persons -- is unable to support its massive critical infrastructure, the lights will tend to go out from time to time.

Stretching from Assam, near China, to the Himalayas and the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, the outage covered states where half of India's 1.2 billion people live and embarrassed the government, which has failed to build up enough power capacity to meet soaring demand.

"Even before we could figure out the reason for yesterday's failure, we had more grid failures today," said R. N. Nayak, chairman of the state-run Power Grid Corporation. _Reuters

This is par for the course across most of sub Saharan Africa and much of third world Asia. And it is a preview of coming attractions for much of the developed world, which is being slowly transformed -- piece by piece -- into a reasonable facsimile of the third world, itself.

If people are attempting to maintain a high tech infrastructure which they do not understand, failure is guaranteed. Not merely intermittent failure, but ultimate failure.

The only alternative in such cases is to solicit outside help from those who do understand the technology.

Of course in India's case, there are large numbers of persons who could repair and upgrade the byzantine power grid. But the massive levels of corruption at every level of India's government essentially guarantees that the best persons for critical infrastructure jobs, will not be the ones who are paid to do those jobs.

In Africa, the permanent infrastructure problems are due to a lack of skilled and trainable manpower, and the general inability to pay outsiders to make up for the intrinsic lack of competence. In MENA, where average manpower competence is slightly better than in sub Saharan Africa, oil rich states can pay outside service companies to keep the power on for most of the 24 hour day, at least.

But India is a special case, with almost 1.4 billion people, and perhaps the widest population variance in basic competencies of any large modern or emerging nation -- from very high to very low.

Which makes India something of a preview of coming attractions for much of Europe. Europe's demographic picture is changing very rapidly, to resemble that of emerging nations such as India, or perhaps Brazil.

Perhaps it is time to stock up on long-burning candles?

More:

any connection to the grid remains a luxury for many. One-third of India's households do not even have electricity to power a light bulb, according to last year's census. _AP

Power shortages and a creaky road and rail network have weighed heavily on India's efforts to industrialize. Grappling with the slowest economic growth in nine years, the government recently scaled back a target to pump $1 trillion into infrastructure over the next five years.

Major industries have their own power plants or diesel generators and are shielded from outages. But the inconsistent supply hits investment and disrupts small businesses.

High consumption of heavily subsidized diesel by farmers and businesses has fuelled a gaping fiscal deficit that the government has vowed to tackle to restore confidence in the economy. _Reuters

Of the BRICs, not a single one is up to the task of leading the global economy out of the doldrums. The opposite is more likely to be the case.

So, think! What will faltering economies in the BRIC nations do to global commodities pricing, and the global economic picture as a whole?

India Looks to Colonise South America, Myanmar

While China is hard at work colonising Africa, India is looking farther abroad to South America in order to provide the necessities for its growing population.

“We have formed a consortium of 14 vegetable oil companies, which is in talks with the governments of Paraguay, Uruguay, and Myanmar for buying large tracts of land for cultivating soya bean, sunflower and pulses,” Ashok Sethia, president of the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India, said.

....Analysts say factories and property developers are buying up farmland, while farm output is also restricted by the poor development of irrigation facilities across much of the country.

“There is too much pressure on our farmland and the government knows it has a difficult task ahead in maintaining food supplies,” Sethia said. _Source

China and India have both outgrown their available resources, due to the gross inefficiencies under which both systems of government operate. Other nations do well with higher population densities, but the corruption present in the systems of India and China are difficult to expurgate.

China is already sponsoring the wholesale destruction of ancient rainforests in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. for the valuable hardwood and to make way for huge palm oil plantations. Unfortunately, the third world colonisers are likely to destroy the quality of the land that they appropriate, leaving their host countries even poorer than when they began.

Peak Oil Punkass? Or Oil Bubblehead?

The debate between the "oil bubble crowd" and the "peak oil doom crowd" has been fast and furious, yet taking on whimsical overtones at times. A recent Physorg newsrelease adds fuel to the "bubble heads."

By analyzing oil prices over the past four years, the researchers have demonstrated more support for the hypothesis that the recent oil price run-up has less to do with supply-demand interplay and more to do with speculation.

In their analysis, the team gathered data on oil prices since 2005 in US dollars, euros, and other major currencies (to confirm that the results are not a consequence of the weakening of the US dollar). They also examined worldwide oil supply and demand data, specifically investigating the extent of increased demand from emerging markets such as China and India.

Then, the researchers analyzed this data using a method that Sornette’s group started to develop in 1996 that identifies bubbles as “transient superexponential regimes” – basically, areas of rapid growth that occur due to a source of positive feedback within the system. The scientists looked at the data in the context of three different models, and all three models revealed the existence of a “log-periodic power law,” in mathematical terms – in other words, a bubble. In economic terms, the researchers explain, a bubble refers to a situation in which expectations of future price increases cause prices to temporarily rise without justification from fundamental valuation....

A comparison of supply and demand showed that, most recently, supply has been exceeding demand by more than a half million barrels per day. Meanwhile, the price continues to increase. Since it appears that the supply-demand balance has only a small effect on the price of oil, the researchers suggest that a major effect lies elsewhere. They point out several reasons why speculation, fed on rumors of rising oil scarcity, may be the positive feedback causing high oil prices.
__PhysorgVia_SnakeOilBaron

Read the entire article for a more thoughtful discussion of the pro-bubble argument than you will find by reading most economic analysts.

The obvious fact that oil prices are influenced by multiple factors should be understood by anyone involved in this debate. It is not an "either-or" question. The facts are that oil prices are subject to emotional over-reaction to events unrelated to current supply and demand issues. The current futures market is more complex than the straightforward commodities market that many analyst cut their teeth on, and at least some oil prices on the market are tied to futures market averages.

Beyond index fund and sovereign fund speculation, there is the larger picture of the decline of many large oil fields--which is simple geology. If one is emotionally inclined to infer a massive global "peak oil doom" scenario from the natural and inevitable decline of oil fields, one will certainly do so. On the other hand, most of the underground and undersea geology of Earth has not been carefully explored for oil resources. That is true even for Saudi Arabia. Even in North American oil fields long considered "dead", new technologies are recovering significant oil--turning a "peak" into an extended plateau for these previously written off fields.

Application of many of these new technologies of recovery and exploration would almost certainly change current concepts of global oil supply.

Part of the oil price surge is due to tight supply and demand margins. Part is due to a weak dollar. Part is due to massive demand from the emerging world. Part is due to financial markets and their influence on oil markets via various mechanisms. Part is due to poorly maintained oil infrastructure within the oil exporting dictatorships. And part of the price runup is intentional politically based manipulation by very wealthy and powerful oil kleptocrats motivated by both greed and a grudge.

Peak oil punkasses have a point about the natural decline of oil fields. But they take the reality far beyond logic and reason, into blindered paranoia. Bubbledywubbledyheads focus on the effect of speculation, sometimes to the exclusion of other factors that influence prices.

The modern disease of academic and media pundits and analysts, as well as their students and acolytes, tends to be an excessive focus on a specialty POV, and a lack of historical perspective. Add to that the complexity of modern financial and commodity markets, and the picture is too easily blurred.

We certainly are experiencing an oil bubble by many definitions, but is it the dominant factor in current economically destructive energy costs? Is it a "bubble within a larger bubble?" Probably.

Taken from original post at Al Fin

A Promising Indian Oil Seed Tree

Pongamia pinnata is an Indian oilseed tree with some interesting characteristics.

“Pongamia can grow on marginal land, waste land not suitable for other crop production,” Mr Gould said. “It’s a sustainable biofuel that does not compete with food crops and enhances rather than detracts from biodiversity.”

Pongamia is a perennial tree whose seed pods are harvested and crushed for the oil, which can then be refined for feedstock for biodiesel. Mr Gould said pongamia can grow in a wide variety of environments, including arid areas and also in estuaries. __CheckBiotech

Pongamia is also a nitrogen fixer, growing without fertilizers. Oil yields are comparable to Jatropha, when planted in plantations.

Some typical yields in US gallons of biodiesel per acre are:

* Algae: 1800 gpa or more (est.- see soy figures and DOE quote below)
* Palm oil: 508 gpa[38]
* Coconut: 230 gpa[38]
* Rapeseed: 102 gpa[38]
* Soy: 59.2-98.6 gpa in Indiana[39] (Soy is used in 80% of USA biodiesel[40])
* Peanut: 90 gpa[38]
* Sunflower: 82 gpa[38]

Algae fuel yields have not yet been accurately determined, but DOE is reported as saying that algae yield 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans.[41], and some estimate even higher yields up to 15000 gpa .[42]

The Jatropha plant has been cited as a high-yield source of biodiesel but such claims have also been exaggerated. The more realistic estimates put the yield at about 200 gpa (1.5-2 tonnes per hectare).[43] It is grown in the Philippines, Mali and India, is drought-resistant, and can share space with other cash crops such as coffee, sugar, fruits and vegetables.[44] __WikiBiodiesel

Pongamia yields approximately 2.5 tonnes per hectare, slightly more than Jatropha. Both Jatropha and Pongamia achieve far better oil yields than soy, rape, and maize. Pongamia may be slightly more frost-tolerant than Jatropha, although both shrubs require a tropical or semi-tropical growing environment.

While Europe and North America will not be able to grow Pongamia or Jatropha on a large scale, the poorer regions in the tropical and semi-tropical South should benefit greatly from both the local use of these oilseed trees for energy and for the ability to export the crop for cash. Already, a large jatropha burning energy plant is being built in Belgium, which will need a steady supply of jatropha seed from the tropics.

Of course, greenhouse farming of the tropical oilseed trees is possible in colder climates, but that will be more expensive than importing the seeds from the tropics, as a general rule.

Is Jatropha a "Dream Fuel?" We'll See

According to some researchers, Jatropha Curcus can produce four times the fuel per area than soy, and ten times more than maize. My Dream Fuel LLC in La Belle, Florida, is gambling that jatropha will work as well in the US as it is beginning to work in other parts of the world.

Nearly 1 million seedlings are in the ground at a nursery in Hendry County and promoters are looking for farmers – here and across the country – to raise them as oil-producing plants....Researchers say the plant can produce four times more fuel per acre than soy, and 10 times more than corn.

...The Jatropha tree, native to Mexico and Latin America, has been grown in other countries, such as India and Africa, for fuel and medicine. It produces fruit with oily seeds that can be crushed to make biodiesel.

In India, there are large plantations with millions of Jatropha trees and My Dream Fuel has a contract with the government to train 1,500 farmers to grow the trees. In China, there are now more than 1 million acres of Jatropha growing.

Locally, Dalton has so much faith in the trees that he expects to put another 1 million in the ground in LaBelle before June. ___Source__via__NextEnergy

Bio-energy will be an actively expanding area for small to medium scale investment in new business enterprise. The demand for new fuel is being driven by the international oil market, as well as by environmentalist restrictions on oil drilling and refinery construction in the US.

A regional approach to bio-energy is the wise approach. Each new enterprise should be based upon the needs of the particular region, and its bio-assets. Jatropha will not grow in areas that are subject to frost, so are not an answer for regions too far away from the tropics. Switchgrass, on the other hand, can be grown in cold and arid regions, and can be converted into almost any hydrocarbon fuel using gasification methods. Not quite as economical as jatropha for diesel, certainly, but with the price of oil ever rising, it makes sense to start looking at processes that were uneconomical when oil was under $40 a barrel.

Home Bio-Gas Digesters, and other Home Energy

Generating your own energy at home is becoming more popular. Mainly because it is becoming more economical, and provides a sense of energy independence that is otherwise lacking. Take the home biogas digester in the photo:

Sintex Industries, a plastics and textiles manufacturer in Gujarat, India, is betting it can find profit in human waste. Its new biogas digester turns human excrement, cow dung, or kitchen garbage into fuel that can be used for cooking or generating electricity, simultaneously addressing two of India's major needs: energy and sanitation.

Sintex's digester uses bacteria to break down waste into sludge, much like a septic tank. In the process, the bacteria emit gases, mostly methane. But instead of being vented into the air, they are piped into a storage canister.

A one-cubic-meter digester, primed with cow dung to provide bacteria, can convert the waste generated by a four-person family into enough gas to cook all its meals and provide sludge for fertilizer. A model this size costs about $425 but will pay for itself in energy savings in less than two years. That's still a high price for most Indians, even though the government recently agreed to subsidize about a third of the cost for these family-sized units. "We want to create a new industry for portable sanitation in India that's not available now," says S.B. Dangayach, Sintex's managing director. ___Source

The most popular current method of home energy generation is photovoltaics. Home wind turbines are also becoming popular in high-wind locations. Home biodiesel and biogas fermentation and synthesis are less common, but perhaps that is because no one has made them easy for homeowners.

Cattle farmers are more likely to begin finding ways to make energy and fertilizer from farm waste and animal manure. Expect ranchers to do the same. The name of the game is profitability, and that means using what you have, and making the most of it.

Biofuels: India and Canada Collaborate

The tremendous potential of biofuels and biomass are barely understood by policy-makers and planners. But technical experts from Canada and India are collaborating to bring biofuels out of the closet.

India says Saskatchewan University will help it in advanced research into second-generation technologies for biofuels...."Agri residues such as bagasse, wheat straw, sorghum and maize straws, leaf litter and various other plant biomass, which have not been adequately utilized for energy production, provide ample opportunities for use as biofuels," said S.A. Patil, director of the Indian institute.

"We have entered into an agreement with the Saskatchewan University in Canada for four specific projects on biofuels."...He said one project is for the conversion of biomass to ethanol using different technologies such as acid hydrolysis and supercritical carbon dioxide to produce fermentable sugars, which will be converted into ethanol via fermentation. Another project is production of biodiesel from jatropha and other oils using ultrasound technology.

Patil said the other two projects are for the conversion of waste biomass into biogas and fertilizers and for biomass conversion into hydrogen through supercritical water process.___Source__via biopact

Small-scale biorefinery projects promise to bring energy production down to a scale where ordinary entrepreneurs, businesspersons, and labourers can benefit--unlike megascale projects of big oil, big coal, and big nuclear.

“Biorefineries producing not just fuel, but also chemicals and energy can be built throughout the United States, utilizing locally available cellulosic biomass feedstocks. These small-scale projects will use a wide variety of feedstocks and test many different technologies for fuel and coproducts, providing experience and data that can be transferred to full-size, commercial-scale biorefineries....“A recent BIO report, ‘Achieving Sustainable Production of Agricultural Biomass for Biorefinery Feedstock,’ showed that through increased use of no-till agriculture farmers can produce and collect crop residues in an economically and environmentally sustainable way. The report identifies available techniques for sustainable harvesting of agricultural residues – such as corn stover and cereal straws – for use as feedstocks for advance biofuel biorefineries. The report is available at http://bio.org/ind/biofuel/SustainableBiomassReport.pdf.

The aspect of biomass and biofuels that seems to distress so many mega-scale energy analysts--its distributed, non-concentrated nature--is actually a good thing for small scale entrepreneurs, and small-town and small-village workers. Because biomass is so "spread out" over wide geographical areas, it lends itself far better to small-scale, local ventures. Faux environmentalists will fail to understand that feature, whereas true environmentalists who care about local economies, will seize sustainable biomass/biofuels as an important issue to promote.

Forget Peak Oil: The Problem is Peak Manpower

The most serious shortage facing the developed world is the shortage of skilled and talented workforce participants.

While Zay looks for executives and top-level managers, the entire energy industry – from welders, tank builders, and roughnecks to petroleum engineers, nuclear engineers, and technicians – is strapped for talent. And the problems are likely to get substantially worse before they get better. Nor is the labor shortage limited to the U.S. and the hydrocarbon sector. Rather, it is worldwide, and being felt in industries ranging from coal mining to nuclear power. The reasons for the labor crunch are many: an aging workforce, lagging student interest in engineering, a lack of interest in blue-collar jobs like welding, and perhaps most important, the strong commodity prices that have led to a boom in energy projects of all types.

...The dearth of skilled workers can be seen by looking at the Gulf Coast. “There is a shortage of several thousand skilled laborers for the offshore industry,” says Bill French, a three-decade veteran of the oil industry and an executive search director for the recruiting firm World Wide Worker. French says that the entire coast is feeling the pinch. All of the offshore industries need welders, not just those who cater to the energy sector. “Welders are making twice as much as they were five years ago,” says French. “It’s like a merry go-round, with workers going across the street for 50 more cents [an hour]…everybody needs welders.”

Michael Harter, chairman of the Tulsa Welding School, the nation’s largest, says demand for his students has never been greater. “I have three to ten job opportunities for every student that leaves us,” he said. Demand is so great that Harter has nearly doubled the size of his classes. Five years ago, the school, which begins a new class every three weeks, would have 60 students. Now, those classes may have 100. And Harter doesn’t see demand slowing down any time soon. “There are so many welders who are already between 55 and 65 and who are retiring. They are retiring as fast or faster than new welders are coming into the job pool.”

The situations for blue-collar workers is matched by that for white-collar professionals. For instance, engineers are in short supply in the North Sea, where Robert Rapier works for one of the supermajors. Rapier, who writes the R-Squared Energy Blog and requested anonymity for his company, says the demand for engineers is “insatiable,” and that he has “posted jobs that literally go unfilled. Supply and demand is out of balance, so the supply side – the manpower – can command high premiums. We have started recruiting a lot in Iran and India.”

Source

Skilled manpower shortages are indeed worldwide, from Hong Kong, to India, to Canada, to large sections of the US.

We already have an active bidding war for top talent in the energy sector. This competition for skilled workers will grow more heated, as experienced workers leave the workforce through retirement.