What is the 5 April lights out about?
In his address to the nation on Friday morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked citizens to turn the lights off in their homes for 9 minutes on Sunday (5 April) starting at 9pm. Instead, “stand at your doors or in you balconies, and light candles or diyas, (or shine) torches or mobile flashlights for 9 minutes” as a show of unity in the nation’s fight against covid-19 pandemic. While this is simple gesture for households to follow, the national electricity grid – which meets India’s power needs – has a lot of work to do maintain reliable power supply during and after this period.
Why is this complicated to manage?
India has a baseload power demand of roughly 160 gigawatts (GW), that is 160,000 megawatts (MW).
