Once, 1,000 people were invited to a feast. But there were only 400 chairs. So it was decided that the guests should be seated in shifts. For dinner that night, 1,000 chairs were arranged. But this time, there was food only for 400 people. Which meant there was not enough to go around.
Two different situations, and this is the fundamental difference between a load-shedding and a power cut - two entirely dissimilar phenomena which the public tend to use as synonyms. G Sreenivasan, resident engineer of the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) in New Delhi, makes use of the analogy in his book ‘Vydyuthi - Charithravum Sasthravum’ (Sign Books) which was released here on Tuesday.
Load-shedding is when power supply cannot be ensured to all at the same time due to various reasons like weaknesses in the system or problems in the transmission system. Power cuts are imposed when there is not enough power to go around when power generation itself has to be cut down due to various reasons.
A slim volume, ‘Vydyuthi - Charithravum Sasthravum’ relates within its covers the history of the earliest discoveries of electricity, aspects of power generation, transmission and distribution, energy conservation, history of electricity in India and Kerala and up to the July 2012 outages - India’s biggest - which left 21 states without power.
The first power house in the state came up on the left bank of the Munnar river in the Pallivasal Estate. Ten years later, another power house came up on the right bank also. Thiruvananthapuram had to wait till 1927 for a tryst with electricity.
One evening that year, the Pazhavangadi Power House in the city started operations supplying power to two consumers and 541 street lamps!
‘’’Vydyuthi - Charithravum Sasthravum’ is like a textbook on electricity. It touches every aspect of electricity and is highly informative in the current scenario,’’ said Electricity Minister Aryadan Mohammed after handing over the first copy to KSEB Chairman M Sivasankar. Mayor K Chandrika, who is a former staffer of the KSEB, also was present on the occasion.