India has witnessed transformational change in the energy sector over the past few years, through supportive policy interventions and sector reforms, making it the fourth largest producer of electricity in the world. However, rapid economic growth has led to a surge in energy demand leading to a grappling power deficit situation in the country. Managing effective sector investment, continuing technological improvements and efficiently implementing the sector programmes will be the key to addressing the sector issues.
The success of key initiatives such as ‘Make in India’, along with growing urbanisation and social uplift of rural India will also depend on the availability of uninterrupted quality electricity supply to consumers. The government’s “Power for All” programme is an ambitious plan, which depends a lot on the development of capacity expansion in power supply chain, developing coal resources and logistics and increasing technological interventions.
The CII-PwC
report titled 'Round-the-Clock Power Supply: A Key Milestone' for the Indian
Power Sector launched at CII Energy Conclave 2016 on 20th August at Kolkata points out that the availability of power will depend on two factors—adequate electricity
generated and development of supporting infrastructure for the supply of
electricity. The report discusses in detail the issue of Round-the-clock electricity for all, Plans to achieve
the programme objective, Capacity expansion of the power supply
chain, Hydropower development in the northeast region, Developments in the coal sector, Technological enablement and Effective programme management .