The transformer industry has been reeling under the severe supply shortages of cold rolled grain oriented steel (CRGO), hampering production and leading to delays in project implementation at various levels.
Availability of this material has simply failed to keep pace with the growing demand. As a result, the price of the product has increased drastically. Since transformer manufacturers have to place orders sufficiently in advance, the industry has been echoing the need of development of indigenous industry for manufacturing CRGO steel.
In July 2009, the steel ministry convened a meeting to explore the possibility of CRGO/CNRGO production in India as the users of these items are heavily dependent on import from very few manufacturers from the international market. In contrast, the ministry of consumer's affairs is insisting on import of these items which is being resisted by the transformer manufacturers. As per the manufacturers, the international producers are not interested to complete or comply with the conditions of BIS certification since the producers are getting customers from other countries in view of shortage of the items all over the world.
During the meeting, it was recommended to re-implement the quality control order, currently been deferred till February 2010, only after reviewing position of the demand and supply gap. It was also suggested that the producers and foreign suppliers must be requested to start obtaining BIS certifications and the steel producers must start considering the production of CRGO and CRNO electrical sheets.
Limited availability of prime material has resulted in large imports of second-hand or defective CRGO steel, which has led to inefficiency and substantial loss of capital. In a transformer, defective steel can cause a power loss of about 140 watts on a 100 kVA transformer. Given that the annual production of such transformers is around 8 lakh units, as per industry reports, the losses are immense.
In the present scenario where India still has to go a long way to fulfill its target of 'Power for All', the bringing down of T&D losses should be taken on priority by the government as well as the private players. Efficiency needs to be promoted at all levels. The CRGO facilities in India must be endorsed to grow in accordance with the growing demand. Domestically produced raw material will also depose the import of second grade electrical steel sheets preventing vast electrical losses attributed to it.

Testing Times Apart from CRGO paucity, the industry is gripped by another shortcoming-the lack of testing facilities. The type testing labs at Bhopal and Bangalore are not functioning efficiently with the result that the manufacturers are experiencing a great deal of difficulty in getting their transformers type tested for delivery to the customers.  These labs are invariably out of service due to some breakdown of equipment and hence there is lot of backlog of units lying untested.  This of course has had its negative repercussion on the quality of transformers. The Centre has initiated a move to involve large manufacturing units, public sector utilities like NTPC, Power Grid Corporation of India to form a joint venture company to set up testing facilities, where Central Power Research Institute (CPRI) will act as management consultant.