Here’s How Delhi Achieved Its Epic Power-Grid Fix

It’s 6 a.m. on a cold January morning in 2002 in New Delhi. It’s still dark outside, and I’m in the kitchen preparing breakfast, packing lunches, and getting my two children ready to catch the school bus when, for the third time in a week, the power goes out. No lights, no mixer to finish my daughter’s puttu—her favorite rice dish—no kettle, no toaster. The bathroom is dark, and the kids are upset. It will probably be hours before the power comes back on, so I grab a flashlight and light the candles that are set up around the house for these occasions. We’re behind schedule now. We pack the food we have, bundle up as the house turns chilly, and head outside, leaving a mess in the kitchen. We make our way to the bus stop in the dark—the streetlights are out, too—only to discover my daughter has missed her ride. Again. I’ll be late for work at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university where I am a professor of electrical engineering and teach power systems and smart grids. I just hope the power is on there. This was a common scene for my family and all of Delhi in the early 2000s. Power outages happened almost daily and lasted hours. When the power was on, the quality was so poor that it would dim lights, flicker screens, and wreak havoc on appliances. Customer service at the power utilities essentially didn’t exist. A child walks in July 2007 past a store in New Delhi specializing in reconditioned generators. The fear of power cuts during summer heat spurs demand for these generators so that residents can produce their own power.Nicholas Bradley/AFP/Getty Images These problems had been getting worse through the 1980s and 1990s. The cause: an aging distribution grid bereft of crucial technologies, and electricity providers with little accountability. The situation became so bad that the city was losing more than half of its power through obsolete equipment and theft. These staggering losses meant that utilities got paid for only a fraction of the electricity they were trying to deliver. And the lack of funds prevented them from investing in better grid infrastructure. But over the last quarter century, a remarkable effort by the government and the city’s distribution utilities has turned Delhi’s grid into a reliable, modern system. Power losses have shrunk from over 50 percent in 2002 to 5 to 6 percent in 2026—on par with France and Belgium, and better than Greece and Serbia. Delhi’s grid reliability index, a measure of how often electricity can be counted on, stood at around 70 percent in 2002 and has now topped 99.9 percent. The bustling Main Bazar in the Paharganj neighborhood of Delhi increasingly uses more nighttime electricity, but reductions in electricity loss help counter demand. iStock With reliable power, businesses across the city have blossomed. The streetlights are bright. The number of electric vehicles, including city buses, is growing daily. Quality of life has improved. Today, my family is comfortable year-round in our home despite Delhi’s scorching summers and cold winters. The chaos of losing power no longer hinders me from getting to work. The city still has problems—pollution, overcrowding, noise—but thankfully, reliable power is no longer among them. The transformation of Delhi’s grid can serve as a model for other cities that suffer from decrepit power infrastructure. Regions of Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Estonia, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Venezuela are reeling from heavy losses in their distribution grids. Their problems look like Delhi’s 25 years ago. I believe it’s possible to improve electricity in these places by adapting the changes Delhi made. Here’s an inside look at how the city accomplished it. Delhi’s Power Grid and Energy Mix The city of Delhi hosts the capital of the Republic of India, and sits along the Yamuna River in the northern part of the country. It’s home to about 23 million people and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Delhi’s grid includes thousands of kilometers of power lines, and peak electricity demand reached an all-time high this year of 8,748 megawatts. The city currently buys 76 percent of its power from central generating companies and private players from neighboring states. Energy generation within the city is restricted to natural gas and renewable sources. Nearly 48.5 percent of the city’s power comes from coal, about 26.5 percent from natural gas, and the rest from carbon-free sources, led by hydropower at 15.6 percent. Tata Power-DDL replaced about 5 kilometers of overhead lines with underground cables, which reduced electricity loss and improved the aesthetics of Delhi’s streets, such as the Janta Flats in the Shalimar Bagh neighborhood.Tata Power-DDL By the early 2000s, Delhi’s nearly 100-year-old power distribution system was in serious disrepair. Everything was old—lines, transformers, circuit breakers, switches. New grid technologies were needed to keep up with new kinds of electricity l

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