Nuclear Energy

of us are not aware about it, but the potential is huge. A recent study by “Prayas Energy Group”, a
well-known Pune-based research group on policy analysis, has estimated the energy savings that
can be achieved by the use of energy-efficient home appliances in the country. The report focuses
on nine appliances which contribute to almost all the electricity consumption in Indian households –
fans, incandescent bulbs, tube lights, refrigerators, ACs, air coolers, electric water heater, room
heater and televisions (active mode) – and apart from that, stand-by power. Stand-by power is
power wasted because appliances are not switched off after use and kept on stand-by mode; the
report takes into consideration the stand-by losses of Set-Top-Boxes, DVD Players, TVs and
computers.
The report takes 2008 as the starting year for its analysis, and calculates the energy savings
that would result if all incandescent bulbs were replaced with CFLs and tube-lights with EE models,
and all new purchases of appliances by households were of the most energy efficient appliances
available in India. The report comes to the astonishing conclusion that after five years, this would
result in an annual savings of about 57 TWh in 2013! That is about 30% of the additional annual
consumption that would otherwise have happened under a business-as-usual scenario in that year.
Retrofitting of lights accounts for about half the saving while ceiling fans, TVs, refrigerators, and
reduction in stand-by power account for another 40% of the savings in households. dcxlv
These potential savings correspond to saving more than 25,000 MW in generating capacity
addition! dcxlvi It is equivalent to the total combined capacity of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power
Plant, the Mithivirdi Nuclear Power Plant, the Kovvada Nuclear Power Plant and the Haripur
Nuclear Power Plant!
Many efficiency measures are very easy to implement, and the investment made would be
more than compensated by the savings. One such extremely quick and cheap way of bringing about
significant energy savings is: replacing incandescent lamps by Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL).
This has the potential to reduce the lighting load of the system by about 80%, and the total cost of
lighting to a consumer by about 66%. dcxlvii It is indicative of the sloppiness and lethargy of our
energy planners and their obsession with setting up new power plants that no serious attempt has
been made to implement even this in our country.
2. Demand Size Management
Apart from increasing end-use efficiency, another way of increasing the availability of
electricity for end-use is by curbing demand, in what is called Demand Size Management (DSM).
There is huge scope for this too in the country. One obvious example is better design of buildings
and street lighting systems – in fact many buildings are so awfully designed that they need lighting
even during daytime in summers, in a tropical country like ours! Similarly, wasteful and
unnecessary illumination of commercial buildings and wasteful lighting of roadside hoardings
should be curbed. At the very least what can be done is that all such consumers should be asked to
immediately install solar lighting systems. Why should scarce electricity from the grid be spent on
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