Food, clothing and shelter are considered the basic needs of human beings. But assuming a person has food and clothing and a house to live in, the first thing likely to be missed in today's world would be electricity without which nothing is likely to work. If one considers history from the time the first human beings inhabited the earth, electricity has been present for a very brief period of this span, just about 150 years. But of all the modern inventions and developments, it is electricity that has had the most significant impact with the exception of the wheel and the printing press. New York city in USA has the distinction as the first to have electricity in the year 1882 followed by London in 1888. India did not lag far behind with Calcutta (now Kolkata) becoming the first city to get electricity with the formation of Calcutta Electricity Supply Company (CESC) in 1899 for power generation and distribution activity.

According to Wikipedia, the utility electricity sector in India had an installed capacity of 271.722 GW as of end March 2015. Renewable Power plants constitutes 28% of total installed capacity and Non-Renewable Power Plants the remaining 72%. The gross electricity generated by utilities is 1106 TWh (1106,000 GWh) and 166 TWh by captive power plants during the 2014-15 fiscal. The gross electricity generation includes auxiliary power consumption of power generation plants. India became the world's third largest producer of electricity in the year 2013 with 4.8% global share in electricity generation surpassing Japan and Russia.