Bombay Electricity Board
*Paper presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Research Committee held in July 1956.
India is essentially an agricultural country where out of a population of 370 million, nearly 80 per cent live in rural areas. The development of the country so far has been lop-sided, as cities only have modern amenities like electricity, water supply, sanitation etc.
Since a large part of India’s population live in rural areas overall economic development of the country cannot be achieved without improving the economic status of the rural population. The first step towards improving the economic condition of the rural population is to provide electricity to the rural areas and establish cottage and small scale indutries there. But the main problem facing the engineers shouldered with the responsibility of rural electrification is that these schemes are not economical. The main reasons for this ore the high capital cost of the schemes and the rather slow load development in rural areas.
In this paper, the ways and means of reducing the capital cost of rural electrification schemes by standardising the designs are discussed. Quite a good degree of economy can be achieved by (i) simplifying the design of the generating stations, (ii) relaxing the rather rigid Electricity Rules, (iii) using all aluminium conductors instead of copper conductors, (iv) using wood poles or prestressed concrete poles instead of rail poles, (v) simplifying the Protective System etc. These factors are discussed in detail in the folloiving pages.
