How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent

How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent spectrum.ieee.org

It slashed electricity losses from 50 to 5 percent

580 points•rbanffy•1 day ago•319 comments•

#electricity #percent #loss #delhi #electricity loss #delhi cut #cut electricity #delhi cut electricity

319 comments

I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago? Cutting electricity loss is one thing, but getting rid of "load shedding" (unplanned power cuts) is the really revolutionary part. It was not uncommon for the power to go out several times a day and you had to rush to unplug expensive appliances (TV, laptop), because when the power came back it was often accompanied by a surge. My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).

devnull31 day ago

> unplanned power cuts

Actually load shedding is planned power cuts. I have seen a schedule published in a newspaper with different regions of the city (not Delhi) and times when no electricity will be available. This is for ppl to plan their day

underdeserver1 day ago

I suspect the semantics are about how long in advance it's planned. A day or two? Planned. An hour? Hard sell.

rootusrootus1 day ago

> Actually load shedding is planned power cuts.

Isn't that a rolling blackout? Load shedding is the technical term and can happen for a variety of reasons that are not based on policy.

__rito__1 day ago

Planned for the electric officials, unplanned for the consumers.

Nowadays, power cuts are announced via SMS in advanced. Before, this was not the case.

actionfromafar1 day ago

Load shedding = it was done on purpose, not that it was pre-planned. If a sudden problem occurs, some areas can be cut to prevent wider failure. I would expect this to be largely automatic.

ghm21801 day ago

Every second house had a diesel generator back then. Ours had to be cranked started by hand(not for the heartless) before push button starters became a thing. The shutoff though was simple tug on the switch; I attached a twine that ran to my bedside for shutoff, which was a godsend at 2:00 AM when the power came back on to make those crazy summer days a bit easier to sleep through.

fastball1 day ago

Small tangential note, but I think you might mean "not for the faint of heart".

InfinityByTenabout 19 hours ago

Oh boy, those Honda maniacs would fire up the entire market area. I can still smell the diesel as I type this.

Gangway08291 day ago

Do you remember the scheduled water cuts? We would stockpile water in buckets so we could flush the toilets. Good old days!

shrikant1 day ago

I remember the inverse of that in Chennai -- scheduled running water for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evenings when we had to stockpile water in every container possible.

alentred1 day ago

> My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).

This I think is a standard practice in any large office building in France (Europe? Global?) too, regardless of the frequency of the power cuts. I don't remember witnessing any power cuts in the office (not since long ago anyway), but in most of the places there are systematically white and red sockets, red ones being powered through a UPS. So, server machines go into red ones. Well, we don't have servers anymore, but the sockets are still there anyway. Hopefully UPS too, LOL.

someonebaggy1 day ago

I've never seen them in France. I've seen them in a chemistry lab section of a university in New Zealand and I believe they're also common in data centers, NOCs, etc. worldwide.

Romario771 day ago

US typically has the whole office with UPS and diesel generators (if it is important enough to do so).

zahlman1 day ago

> I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago?

I wonder how many HNers are, or ever have been there in the first place? It seems strange to me to ask who "recalls" what it was like there before. What would such a recollection be based on? There's only so much attention one can pay to what daily life is reportedly like around the world, and that required believing the reports.

kelipso1 day ago

At least a quarter of tech professionals in Silicon Valley are born in India. So I would guess a quarter to a third or more of the posters here are Indian origin.

India accounts for a big portion of the english speaking internet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if half the posters here are Indian origin.

groos1 day ago

The effort to reduce electricity theft has had an interesting side effect. One of the ways to prevent theft is to insulate the power lines going into neighborhoods. This also makes them safe for monkeys to use as 'roads' with the result that roving gangs of monkeys move from neighborhood to neighborhood with ease and also have access to the upper floor of apartment buildings because of the proximity of the power lines. I saw this in person a few years ago.

notRobot1 day ago

Well the planet is theirs as well, so one may argue that putting up live wires that can electrocute them is quite cruel in the first place, especially given the lack of any preservation of their natural habitats in most places.

sixo1 day ago

They just need to be educated not to touch the wires. As it happens they figured it out pretty quick

sharts1 day ago

Agreed. And nothing is stopping folks from running underground cables except crying about it being more expensive (i.e the true cost vs side effects to other populations so long as it doesn’t affect the consumers).

It’s as though all wealth and progress hinge on taking from others.

sbmthakur1 day ago

Concerns about animal welfare are increasing and as a result are being factored into infrastructure projects. Better late than never.

Also it would also avoid such incidents.

Minister blames monkey for Sri Lanka nationwide power cut

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8d92n28pqjo

Infrastructure projects, whether big or small should always factor in local ecosystem. For example, highways built with with overpasses and underpasses are a great help to animals.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/samruddhi-fo...

MikeNotThePopeabout 19 hours ago

A couple years ago in Nepal, a large group of monkeys passed by a window next to my table at a restaurant. They were casually strolling on the power lines.

jasondigitizedabout 10 hours ago

Tell me more about said gangs of monkeys.

wannabe44about 11 hours ago

Well the monkeys should be just shot in that case. Violence is an underrated solution.

thelastgallon1 day ago

India has one thing going for it, sunlight all the time.

India can adopt plug-in standards, solar and batteries. I guess most people use some form of battery (UPS/Inverter) anyways, so the idea is familiar.

Rooftop is known and it can continue to grow. Next, add vertical solar. This will add ~4 hours of solar production.

Required gated communities to be self sufficient or net producers. Cover the surfaces of all high rises with vertical panels. Require these communities to have BESS and EV charging for all car parking. This adds two layers of storage. BESS instead of diesel generators. Add outlet for induction stove. No need of piped gas. I've seen villa communities where most homes are net producers, these ideas are happening, need to be standardized as regulation. Easiest thing is to create standards for the gated communities, which can be enforced.

Don't build rural transmission infrastructure. They can be offgrid, using solar and batteries. It is not worth the cost to build and maintain transmission and distribution infrastructure to millions of small villages.

Work towards regulating uber/rapido to require EV cars. These drive the most miles in cities and would do wonders.

Lots of scope for growth.

ghm21801 day ago

Rooftop solar use had and continues to explode in most tier 2 cites where its seen as a great way to save on electricity bills by feeding that power back to the grid. Its one of the few bright spots in a country with relentless expenses and price pressures.

darkwizard421 day ago

Would argue it is even coming to Tier 3 cities (personal experience from Rourkela, Odisha where I feel like rooftop solar has exploded in the last 5 years)

ChucklsTheBeardabout 11 hours ago

> Required gated communities to be self sufficient or net producers.

This seems like it would have unintended consequences. Gated communities are mostly populated by richer classes, right? This could be used as an excuse to not invest in forms of power production that would benefit from larger economies of scale and produce power for everyone.

sieve1 day ago

All great points.

We installed a 5 kWp plant last month. Grid-tied, of course. Our daily usage is in the 12-25 kWh range depending on the season and the plant produces ~12 kWh on the worst days (~35 on the best, so far).

We have been doing our cooking almost exclusively on induction for the last 6-7 years, and I have been trying to get others to switch as well. However, it is difficult to convince people of the benefits. Some Indian cooking requires exposing the food directly to the flames, so piped/bottled gas cannot be completely eliminated.

kumarvvr1 day ago

I have rooftop solar and a small EV. Saves me a lot on electricity and fuel costs.

Installed capacity is 5kW. Which is generally sufficient as we use very less power.

I have induction stoves, so gas fuel for kitchen is minimized.

Planning to put a solar based offgrid chiller unit for air conditioning next.

idiotsecant1 day ago

Great, sounds like youve planned for the 1/3 of the electrical load that residential usage represents.

pbmonster1 day ago

How did you get that number? Is this just a quip about batteries?

Most of India has a solar capacity factor >0.2 and low seasonality. That means even 5kW peak rooftop panels and a 10 kWh battery will get you over 95% almost always. And panels+labor is so cheap in India, there's really no reason not to just tile the roof in panels.

Things get more difficult in dense cities, if you have multi story apartment blocks going 90+% locally is impossible. But then just transmit power from lower density rooftops, or actual solar farms.

And this already assumes widespread AC (really no way to increase electrification this much and not add AC in that climate).

triceratops1 day ago

1/3 of anything is a lot.

thelastgallonabout 20 hours ago

Industrial/Commercial can also do rooftop, vertical and source power directly from solar farmers. Agriculture in India is ridiculously small landholdings, perfect for solar pumps. That covers the remaining 2/3rd.

toomuchtodo1 day ago

Our World In Data: Installed solar energy capacity: India - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

India’s Clean Energy Boom Halts Coal Power Growth - https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indias-Cl... - September 18th, 2026

Ember Energy: India - https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/india/ - Last Updated: June 4th, 2026

Ember Energy: Battery storage is now cheap enough to unleash India’s full solar potential - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/battery-storage-is-... - April 7th, 2026 ("Ember’s analysis shows how solar and battery storage can meet as much as 90% of India’s electricity demand at lower LCOE than the average power purchase costs in most states.")

- Solar and batteries could supply 90% of India’s electricity demand at a competitive LCOE of around INR 5.06/kWh ($56/MWh).

- 4.9 GW of solar and 13.5 GWh of battery capacity for every 1 GW average demand load is enough to meet 83-92% of annual electricity demand in the ten largest states.

- 7 of India’s largest states by electricity demand can meet 90-92% of their demand with solar and batteries at an LCOE between INR 4.96–5.09/kWh ($55–56/MWh).

Ember Energy: India’s electrotech fast-track: where China built on coal, India is building on sun - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-... - January 22nd, 2026

- 27% of India’s electricity was generated from clean sources in 2025. It was the 3rd largest country by electricity demand.

- As of March 2026, India was one of only ten countries planning to triple non-fossil generation capacity from 2022 levels by 2030. By December 2025, the country had achieved 258 GW of installed renewables capacity, making progress towards its 2030 goal of 500 GW. Ember analysis suggests that, under current plans, renewables would reach 42% of generation by 2030.

gwbas1c1 day ago

> The losses in Delhi weren’t caused solely by technical problems. Theft of electricity was rampant, by both the powerful and the powerless (in both senses of the word). Businesses, residential customers, and utility employees with vested interests would siphon electricity from the grid. It was easy to illegally hook into a streetlight or a distribution line running close to one’s house or factory. Utilities didn’t have the resources to identify theft or penalize offenders.

In general, once "everyone" is breaking a rule, more people break the rule too. Or to put it more bluntly; if everyone is breaking a rule, you should too.

abid786about 10 hours ago

No you shouldn’t. The blatant disregard for the law is prevalent in South Asia but it’s not an excuse to do it yourself

ghoul2about 17 hours ago

The article doesn't cover this, but, a huge contrast is Torrent Power (Ahmedabad/Surat), which has consistently (over many decades, the ahmedabad power company is actually over 100 yrs old) maintained world-highest levels of electricity supply and service quality, distribution losses, billing efficient. Beating Tokyo, equaling Singapore.

Zero load shedding, on-site within 10 minutes typically in case of fault reports, ALL supply lines underground. Planned maintenance schedules communicated week+ in advance (rare, once every few years).

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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