Outage in India May Draw Large-Scale Public Investors

In late July 2012, India experienced the worst power outage in their history. More than 680 million people, more people than the United States, Mexico, and Canada combined were without electricity. India had a second outage. Factories, offices, and other buildings at the time either switched to backup generators or closed temporarily. Backup generators in India are common for many large-scale businesses. India is Asia’s third largest economy, the economic workshop for outsourcing and technology services. Indian businesses cite that electricity supply is a key impediment to economic growth.

The manifestation of the power outage was a failure of power grids. The extreme heat during the summer of 2012 caused record levels of heat in New Delhi. Along with other factors, it was a perfect storm for an outage. Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd., is the state managed company that operates five regional grids. It runs more than 100,000 kilometers of electricity transmission lines.

India mostly relies on coal as their primary energy source.

Sovereign wealth funds like Singapore’s Temasek Holdings are keen on India’s infrastructure sector despite bureaucratic hurdles. They see the sector as promising. [Content protected for Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute Standard subscribers only. Please subscribe to view site content.]

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