India Faces Dark Summer in 2012 with Prices Spiral,Fuel Shortages,Local Agitation,Producer Losses

India faces a Long and Dark Summer in 2012 with its Electricity Industry in Shambles.The list of woes is almost non-ending and the government is the biggest culprit.Locked in a policy paralysis due to its corruption taint,the authorities have failed to move.Indian Electricity Companies too are facing losses and may even default on some project debt.The state distribution companies already have racked up billion of dollar in losses due to total mismanagement of  tariffs and power theft.So the whole supply chain is in trouble with the Indian Banks also in trouble as they have lent billions to the power producers.

India is one of the biggest electricity consumers in the country.Despite massive demand,the supply is not coming up as the power plants are locked in litigation and protests by locals as well.Land acquisition has been a point of concern leading to deaths.Nuclear Power  Plants in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are not being built due to Fukushima dangers.Hydro Power Plants too face problems as people are concerned about the environmental impact. Coal India the monopoly producer has nto managed to meet targets.It keeps raising prices and lowering production while imported coal makes the electricity generated too costly to be sold.

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Indian Private Power Companies Cry for a Bailout,Want Socialization of Their Losses

Indian Electricity Companies are crying for a bailout from the government after coal prices surged last year amidst shortages of coal.Note before the Lehman crisis,Indian private power producers were riding a boom equivalent to a mini tech bubble trading at crazy valuations.The reason was that the Indian government had opened the Electricity sector to the private players resulting in them winning contracts for 42 GW most of which were thermal power plants.At that time coal prices were quite low and there was no threat of shortages with India’s government owned Coal India providing secure long term contracts at cheap.The future looked great for companies like Reliance Power which came out with the biggest IPO in the Indian stock market history.Private companies were busy planning on setting up supercritical mega power plants of 4 GW capacity.

Nuclear Power in India Issues – High Costs,Health Hazards,Massive Delays and Not in My Backyard Protests

NIMBY Protests Growing

Rawatbhata Nuclear Power Plant in Rajasthan is situated near a major dam which makes it susceptible to major flooding.Besides the villages near the plant have reported higher incidences of abortion and cancer which is typical of radiation effect of human health.A new plant being proposed in Bhavnagar,Gujarat too is seeing protests being organized by villages near the plant.

Nuclear Plants face massive cost overruns

 New Nuclear Power Plants face massive delays leading to much higher costs as rule and regulations become tougher.The Nuclear Power Already the nuclear renaissance which was supposed to be boosted by India and China is coming under attack.India’s nuclear power plant to be built at Jaitapur by Areva is seeing massive protests by local villagers as well as intellectuals alike.India has around 4.5 GW of Nuclear Power Plant Capacity which it proposes to increase by around 1-2 GW every year.This will hardly make a huge difference to India’s massive power needs which rerquires 10 GW of power every year.Nuclear Energy Disadvantages with the Tail Risk of a Meltdown are too huge to be ignored.