Future of electricity supply in West Bengal (Indian Union)

Abstract

This thesis aims to give an independent and critical survey of the problems of public supply of electrical energy in West Bengal generally. It first considers the progress and development in the years preceding 17th August 1947, when the Indian sub -continent was granted independent status and the partition of the country between Pakistan and the Indian Union was initiated. Next, a survey is given of the new conditions obtaining after partition. The desirability of electrical supply development is discussed and the published suggestions of the Government of Bengal considered.

A short -term scheme is described for the immediate introduction of a supply to a rural district east of Calcutta. The district considered, having eight centres of consumption, is submitted to a careful and conservative estimate of its load potentialities, with due regard to the geographical, climatic and sociological conditions obtaining. The load development is predicted on a basis of statistical material derived from a variety of sources; technical methods of engineering the scheme with economy are considered, and some attention is given to the formation of suitable tariffs.

The thesis has, as background, the results of several years' experience of the problem as it developed, both before and after Partition. It embodies the material gathered by direct study in the district concerned; by study of rural electrification schemes in Britain arranged by courtesy of the supply industry in Britain, the Central Electricity Board, and later the British Electricity Authority; and by calculation and design work in the South East Scotland Electricity Board's offices and in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Heriot-Watt College (University of Edinburgh) .

The details and discussion of the supply scheme for the district east of Calcutta, described in the second part of the thesis, are the original work of the author. It is his intention, as a servant of the Electricity Development, Government of West Bengal, to present the results obtained to the Administration of his Department in the hope that the wider distribution of the benefits of electrical supply may be more swiftly made available to the people of West Bengal.