Comments on: 670,000,000 people without power in India (AGW-linked)

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:02:51 +0000

Alan, you are overreaching. AGW is responsible for increased drought world wide, and regions of India have been thus affected. The people reporting on this tell us that one of the extra draws is the demand from electric pumps for irrigation to compensate for the drought. Therefore, the connection is reasonable.

This does not obviate other connections at all, nor does am I saying that it is the most important connection, but it is one.

Cooling and heating demands generally are the biggest draw on power though I’m not sure of the ratio in India. But I have a feeling there are one or two air conditioners there.

AGW causes India black out may have been a long bow. (Hadn’t heard the expression before, BTW). What I saw, though was a global drought and a global heatwave and then this event in India being discussed pretty much in isolation of AGW. So I made the link. Not only did I call it a link, not a primary casuse, but I did not emphasize it in the post, I put it at the end of the post, and I put it in parenthesis.

I’m pretty sure I drew just the right bow on this.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:04:14 +0000

AGW is a real problem and heat waves have been known to knock out power grids. However I think your drawing a long bow linking AGW to this incident.

By: lyle

lyle — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:01:43 +0000

Any electric grid requires a real time balance between supply and demand. There is no way to store energy on the grid in large scale use for short term issues (long term pumped storage works) It is reported that India has been underinvesting in its electric grid since independence, and that 30 to 50% of the electricity goes unmetered. Also Indian coal mines are a mess.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:59:11 +0000

You people are nit-picking while the GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS COLLAPSING!!!

By: Zippy the Pinhead

Zippy the Pinhead — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:38:47 +0000

“minors” trapped in mines. Did you mean “miners” or do you mean there are under-aged workers or maybe the little tykes are visiting their parents at work in the mines?

By: Ian Kemmish

Ian Kemmish — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:44:58 +0000

The BBC reports that on Monday the northern grid failed, but engineers restored power by the evening. The second failure affected the northern, north-eastern and eastern grids at lunchtime on Tuesday.

I think most operators, and most countries’ presses, would regard that as two separate incidents.