At the dawn of independence in 1947, power generation, transmission and distribution systems were mostly confined to metropolitan cities and big towns and were controlled by the private sector. The country had then no technology base in electrical power engineering and practically all equipment for the power sector were imported. Today the country has large-scale interconnected power systems and infrastructural facilities to indigenously manufacture power equipment and accessories both for the country's need and for export.

The seminar will highlight chronological development of power system in India, current Grid problems and then will discuss the challenges facing the power system in the world in general and in India in particular.

Biography of Janardan Nanda:
Prof. J. Nanda has been a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi since 1973. He has served as Head Electrical Engineering Deptt., Dean(UG) and Member Board of Governor at IIT Delhi. His field of interest is power system engineering with special interest in analysis, stability, control, optimization and computational intelligence application to power system problems. Prof. Nanda has been a consultant to ABB, Siemens, and several industries/utilities in India and abroad and has served as a Chairman/Member of many National level Expert committees. He has served as a Reader at Imperial College of Science and Technology London,as a Professor at west Virginia University USA and as a visiting Professor in many countries such as US,Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. He has guided 25 Ph.D students, 150 Master level students, has large number of publications in Journals of repute and has several National Awards and recognitions to his credit. Professor Nanda is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of Third World Academy of Sciences , and a Fellow of IEEE.