In the early 2000s, Delhi’s electricity supply was highly unreliable, with frequent outages that forced families to rely on candles, voltage stabilizers, and home inverters to keep basic appliances running. As recalled by Professor Mini Shaji Thomas of Jamia Millia Islamia in an IEEE Spectrum account, power failures occurred almost daily, lasting hours and damaging equipment due to poor voltage quality. The city’s distribution grid was losing more than half of the electricity it injected into the network—a figure exceeding 50 percent in 2002—leaving utilities without sufficient revenue to fund necessary upgrades.
This image shows the professor whose personal account in the article illustrates the severity of Delhi's electricity reliability issues before modernization efforts began.
Over the next 25 years, Delhi’s distribution utilities, especially Tata Power‑DDL, executed a comprehensive modernization programme. They replaced about five kilometres of overhead lines with underground cables, which reduced technical losses and improved street aesthetics in neighbourhoods such as Shalimar Bagh. Simultaneously, the utility rolled out increasingly sophisticated, tamper‑resistant meters that improved billing accuracy and discouraged electricity theft. These measures, combined with targeted anti‑theft initiatives that included community outreach and improved collection practices, lowered losses in Tata Power‑DDL’s area from 53.1 percent in 2002 to 6.3 percent by 2023, and helped bring city‑wide losses down to the 5‑6 percent range by 2026.
The technical gains translated into a much more reliable network: Delhi’s grid reliability index rose from roughly 70 percent in 2002 to over 99.9 percent today, placing its performance on par with France and Belgium and better than Greece or Serbia. Residents now enjoy brighter streetlights that burn throughout the night, enabling safer evening commerce in markets like Paharganj’s Main Bazar. The number of electric vehicles, including city buses, is growing daily, and households experience year‑round comfort despite Delhi’s scorching summers and cold winters. However, the city still grapples with persistent challenges such as air pollution, overcrowding, and noise, which remain unrelated to the power‑sector improvements.