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| Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ |
Have
you seen the movie ‘The Dark Knight Rises?’ If you haven’t, no problem! I’m not
going to talk about this movie here. There’s lot more to talk about in India
apart from Cricket, Bollywood and Team Anna.
After my second year of Engineering Degree, I did the summer internship from a thermal power station of 600MW capacity (having two units of 300MW each). It is a coal fired thermal power plant. I was in the Boiler Maintenance Division (BMD) there. It will look a bit technical to many, so, let me explain it in some non-technical terms. The Plant hardly produced the Power which the same is capable of producing. And the reasons for this are many: the shortage of coal (which has a very small influence on low power production), the breakdown of the machinery, the planned shutdown for maintenance and many more. The Tripping of the plant is also a major reason for the less production than the full capacity.
Why am I talking about Thermal Power Plant? Why am I explaining all this? Last week, in the early morning at around 3 o’clock, electricity cut off in my town. The inverter backed up and all looked normal. In the morning news, I saw the shocking story. What I was conceiving a normal power cut in my town was actually a grid-failure of more than 2/3rd of India. The Northern, North-Eastern, Eastern Grid failed and near about 80 crore people were affected by this huge power breakdown.
It was shocking to hear that the people in the mines under the earth got stuck there, the operations stopped amidst, the trains stopped and the country looked motionless. In the news, I got to know the first time that we are purchasing electricity (in the peak hours) from a country like Bhutan! And for getting out of the trouble of Grid failure, excess of electricity was purchased from Bhutan for that day.
After my second year of Engineering Degree, I did the summer internship from a thermal power station of 600MW capacity (having two units of 300MW each). It is a coal fired thermal power plant. I was in the Boiler Maintenance Division (BMD) there. It will look a bit technical to many, so, let me explain it in some non-technical terms. The Plant hardly produced the Power which the same is capable of producing. And the reasons for this are many: the shortage of coal (which has a very small influence on low power production), the breakdown of the machinery, the planned shutdown for maintenance and many more. The Tripping of the plant is also a major reason for the less production than the full capacity.
Why am I talking about Thermal Power Plant? Why am I explaining all this? Last week, in the early morning at around 3 o’clock, electricity cut off in my town. The inverter backed up and all looked normal. In the morning news, I saw the shocking story. What I was conceiving a normal power cut in my town was actually a grid-failure of more than 2/3rd of India. The Northern, North-Eastern, Eastern Grid failed and near about 80 crore people were affected by this huge power breakdown.
It was shocking to hear that the people in the mines under the earth got stuck there, the operations stopped amidst, the trains stopped and the country looked motionless. In the news, I got to know the first time that we are purchasing electricity (in the peak hours) from a country like Bhutan! And for getting out of the trouble of Grid failure, excess of electricity was purchased from Bhutan for that day.
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| Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk |
On
one side, more than half of the country was suffering from unprecedented Power
crisis and on the other side the Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde got
promoted as Home Minister of the country. And the worst, no clear reasons for
the Grid failure are given by the Power Ministry and said that U.P, Punjab and
Haryana are consuming more electricity than their allotted part. Mr. Shinde
even appreciated his men for restoring power so quickly. This clearly authenticates
what my guide for the project at the Thermal Power Station said. He was in the
maintenance department and I asked him once what your work in the maintenance
is? He said that there are two kinds of maintenance: Pre-maintenance and
Post-maintenance. In the plant, the post maintenance work is so much that they
do not get time to look after the post maintenance. And then, we had a good
laugh about it.
I think we Indians laugh a lot. On our failures, on our mistakes, on our
dispossessions and on our system!
May
God bless our system! May God bless our country!
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| Source: http://im.rediff.com |
Very right Gopal! We Indians laugh a lot on our in-capabilities.. Nice write-up..
ReplyDeleteYes we do Ms. Anjali!
DeleteAnd not only that, we always love to stretch our limits but we don't want to work for it. We want to eradicate corruption, but, never hesitate for the under the table transactions to get our work done on the table.
Keep reading, Cheers!