History of growth and development of Thermal power Plants in India and West Bengal

The growth and development of Thermal power stations are discussed in two ways initially that is
pre-independence and post-independence period. After that year wise as well as unit wise growth
and development have been studied.
Pre-Independence:
With the setting up of 130 KW hydroelectric power plant in Darjeeling in West Bengal, electricity
supply was started in India in the 1880s. The coal-based first thermal power plant was established
in Calcutta in 1899 near Princep Ghat (“CESC Limited,” 2018), the first legal provision of support
and control of the sector was established through the Indian Power Act, 1910. First electric bulb
light was introduced in Calcutta in 1879 by P. W. Fleury & Co.(“Electricity sector in India -
Wikipedia,”) Maximum power plants were operated by private companies during this period.
Electricity was not as famous as now in those days. It was promoted through advertisement in
newspaper, pamphlets etc. CESC initiatives were remarkable in those days, hand fans, horse
carriage trams and gas lights etc. are replaced by electrified equipment by the early 1990s.
Interestingly, electricity was introduced in India after 10 years and 17 years of the introduction of
electricity in London and New York respectively. (Madan, et al., 2007).
In this period electricity was generated from the source of hydel and coal based thermal power
plant. This study only focused on the growth and development of thermal power plant. Calcutta
Electricity Supply Company has first commissioned coal based thermal power plants in India i.e.
Emambagh Power Station near Princep Ghat which served to Calcutta’ (now Kolkata) from 1899.
Later the capacity was upgraded through expansion and installation of different units in Howrah
(165 kW), Alipore (700kw) and Ultadanga (1200 kW) (Madan et al., 2007). In 1882, first electric
lighting was found in Bombay (now Mumbai) at Crawford market and Bombay Electric Supply &
Tramways Company (BEST) established a power station in 1905 for supply electricity to tramway
(Saini, 2018) Mainly, in this period thermal power plants were established near large cities like
Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Bangalore etc. and small in terms of size and power generation
capacity (Singh, 2010). In this period maximum power generation units are performed by private
companies and local authorities which supplied to the large cities and industrial belts, only due to
the huge demand of electricity from industry and insufficient capability of transmission as well as
distribution. The total installed capacity was 1.1 MW under which maximum electricity was
generated by the thermal power plant i.e. 1 MW(Satpathy, 2015).
Post-Independence:
After independence, private sectors were not able to make the capital requirement for the
development of electricity which widened the path of investment in electricity generation of
Government of India. So, initially numbers of government invested power generation plants were
increased in this period (Satpathy, 2015). Share of hydel power generation had been decline sharply after
independence for cheaply better availability of coal for electricity generation(Ananthakumar & Saif, 2016).
The power generation installed capacity as well as transmission and distribution was increased very sharply
after independence (“Growth of Electricity Sector in India from 1947-2017.pdf,” ). In 1947, the total power
generation capacity was 1362 MW which is jumps into 344002 MW in the end of March, 2018(“Growth
of Electricity Sector in India from 1947-2018.pdf,” ). For better performance in terms of power generation,
transmission and distribution, State Electricity Boards (SEBs) were formed in their respective
administrative units during 1950-1967 (Mukherji, 2009).
During the plan period, power generation stations were established in much planned manner as per the
demand. Following table showing the development of power plants during the plan periods.