Generation, Transmission and Utilisation: Where the Energy Is Lost

In one line

Follow one unit of coal from the seam to the light bulb and watch what is lost at each of five stages, because the law is different at every one of them.

The chain, and why to think in chains

Energy is not made; it is converted, and every conversion loses something. A resource management answer that treats generation, transmission and utilisation as three separate topics misses the point. They are one chain, and a saving at the end of the chain is worth more than a saving at the beginning, because it avoids all the losses in between.

The five stages are: extraction and transport of the primary resource; conversion into electricity; transmission; distribution; and end use. The largest single loss in a conventional chain is at the second stage, and the largest legally addressable loss in India is at the fourth.

Stage one: extraction and transport

Something is lost before any electricity is made. Coal must be cut, hauled, washed, transported and stored; oil must be lifted, piped, refined and distributed; gas must be compressed. Each of those steps consumes energy, and each has its own losses: ash and moisture carried uselessly along a railway, gas flared at a wellhead, oil evaporated in storage.

The law here is the mining and petroleum law of Modules II and IV. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act speaks of conservation and systematic development of minerals; and the Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Act allows rules under section 6(2) for the development of mineral oil resources, for the prevention of waste, and for the plugging and abandonment of wells.

The words prevention of waste are worth quoting. A statute that can make rules against waste in extraction is regulating the first loss in the chain, and most students never notice it.

For a non-conventional chain, this stage is nearly empty. There is nothing to extract, haul or store. That is the largest single advantage of a flow resource, and it is invisible if you begin the analysis at the generator.

Stage two: conversion

This is where most of the energy goes, and it goes as heat. A thermal station converts chemical energy to heat, heat to mechanical energy in a turbine, and mechanical energy to electricity. The second step is bounded by thermodynamics: a heat engine cannot convert all of its heat into work, and the rest leaves through the condenser and the cooling water.

Three legal hooks at this stage.

Section 73(b) of the Electricity Act puts the technical standards for construction of electrical plants, electric lines and connectivity to the grid with the Authority, and section 7 makes compliance with the connectivity standards the only condition of delicensed generation.