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Comment by devnull3 | Hacker News Reader

> 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

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

Planned collision with iceberg!

I call this Caution Shedding.

see also: squirrel wingsuit.

Far enough in advance to be available in a printed newspaper. Planned.

The load shedding was a chronic problem. It lasted months if not years.

Example from year 2003 (city = Pune) [1]. Its hard to read

Excerpt:

The load shedding schedule is as follows:

  Group A: Monday 8 am to 11 am, Tuesday 11 am to 2 pm,Wednesday 3 to 6 pm, Saturday 11 am to 2 pm: Navi Peth, Gultekdi I and II, Dhankawdi, Padmawati, Old Parvati I and II, SNDT, G Block, Parsi agiary, City Apollo, Sant Tukaram, Kharalwadi. 

  Group B: Monday 11 am to 2 pm, Tuesday 3 pm to 6 pm, Friday 8 am to 11 am

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/mseb-announces...

I just don't understand why government didn't step in and raise the price of electricity 5x.

It is better to have electricity 24x7 but only 50 watts to run a fridge, phone charger and one lightbulb, than to have electricity 3 hours a day but be running 1000 watts of airconditioners.

I guess perhaps energy theft was too hard to police?

You’re assuming a far more functional system than what was going on.

“And there was no penalty for not paying—there were no regulations allowing the utilities to cut off a customer’s power.”

Collecting more money in a corrupt organization doesn’t means they will automatically get a more effective distribution system.

> and raise the price of electricity 5x.

People wont vote for them if they increased the price by 5x.

And then there’s the small matter of it being financially ruinous for the poorest people

common misconception. In fact, it would probably be cheaper for most people since they wouldn't have to own a generator (or pay for use of someone elses).

Instead, people (especially the poorest) would need to put effort into tracking their own usage - and understanding that an airconditioner uses far more electricity than a phone charger.

This seems completely out-of-touch with reality, and absolutely insults the intelligence of the poorest people

With higher energy cost, People who could afford ACs would pay off the linemen to connect the AC directly bypassing the meter.

This continued even in 2013. Had to finally pay for an inverter because PCs do not have built in batteries like laptops do and work was being impacted.

Useless industries like RO water, gensets, inverters etc are so much larger in India because of governmental abdication of responsibility due to political compulsions. Once you have your own house, or live in a gated community/highrise with its own water/power infra, you get almost western levels of comfort without the messiness of the outside world.

What's RO water?

Btw, what you describe is also true of malls. Basically, every country has shiny malls.

Every house there (that can afford the essential $200 or so) has a Reverse Osmosis water filter because the municipal water supply (if any) is not considered potable.

RO water is Reverse Osmosis water. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis)

> 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.

Planned for the electric officials, unplanned for the consumers.

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

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.

There was some priority order to determine which circuits should be load-shed when there is a power shortage. For example while scouting datacenter sites across Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, I learnt that 220KV lines were not part of load-shedding schedule whereas 66KV lines were. If you took power directly from the power generation company and had contracted power then also you were protected.

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