Minimise power losses: President

President A P J Abdul Kalam has asked the industry to minimise the losses from transmission. He was delivering the special address during the inaugural day of international conference on energy conservation, 'Synergy for Energy,' here on Friday.

Kalam said that Gujarat and Rajasthan should be the hub of India's solar energy as both the state enjoy 'sun shining' throughout the year.

Saying that the country's major concern is now the loss of power in transmission, which in India ranges from a whooping 40 to 50 per cent.

"When we generate 78,000 MW of power, the consumer get only 47,000 MW, whereas in the developed countries, the loss is only around 15 per cent. Hence, comparatively we have an additional loss of 19,000 MW of power and to produce this 19000 MW power, we need to invest at least Rs 76,000 crore as one MW of power costs minimum Rs 4 crore.

"This is the magnitude of the problem we are facing and I urge the industry to take urgent action to remedy the situation and bring down losses working on mission mode. In this collaboration between producers, transmission engineers and R&D specialists is required," Kalam said.

Saying that designs of construction, specially buildings which consume lot of power, also can lead to massive savings of energy for India, Kalam said that the country now should address energy conservation issues pertaining to building constructions.

"Energy is required while constructing the buildings and also for maintenance of the building in the form of providing lighting, maintaining particular temperature, provision of essential services such as water cooling system, heating, cooking etc. The building design has to take into account all these aspects so that construction cost of the building can be lowered and recurring cost also can be minimised with energy saving," he said.

Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi and state Governor, Nawal Kishore Sharma shared the dais with Kalam at Tagore Hall on Friday.

Stressing on need of solar farms, the President said, "States like Gujarat and Rajasthan can have solar farms with huge power generation capacity than the usual 8-10 MW capacity solar energy units. Solar cooking is also one of the important applications in the field of renewable energy and we also should try to advance in applying high efficiency NANO crystal LEDs (light emitting diodes) which consume much lesser energy than filament lamps and LED lamps also have more longevity than the filament ones which we use extensively," said the President.

He also requested Modi to adopt 'Green House' style for Gujarat so that buildings constructed here will have designs that can lead to maximum savings of electricity.