The first electric bulb glowed in Kerala in 1906 when its first hydroelectric generator of 200 kilo Watt (kW) ran in a private tea estate (the Kannan Devan Hill produce Company) at Munnar in the High Ranges in the then Travancore area.
Facts do corroborate that the system growth in Kerala has never been up to the mark of potential requirement.
The price paid by Kerala for such failure or absence itself of a perspective planning mechanism has been immense in terms of power shortage for quite a long time.

The first electric bulb glowed in Kerala in 1906 when its first hydroelectric generator of 200 kilo Watt (kW) ran in a private tea estate (the Kannan Devan Hill produce Company) at Munnar in the High Ranges in the then Travancore area. However, it took more than two decades after that for the Government to come to the scene by commissioning (on February 25, 1929) a 5 mega Watt (MW) thermal station in Thiruvananthapuram,  exclusively for the royal and administrative uses. The first public sector power project, designed on a large scale for commercial uses, in Kerala came on line in March 1940 with the first unit of 5 MW of Pallivasal hydro-electric power station. Within the next decade, five more units were added to the project to increase its installed capacity (IC) to 37.5 MW. Sabarigiri hydro-power station of 340 MW of IC, commissioned in 1966-67, was the first (of the two) major power project in Kerala. Idukki, with 780 MW of IC and commissioned in 1976 (I Stage) and in 1985 and 1986 (II Stage) is the largest hydro-power station in Kerala. These two stations together constitute about 54.4 per cent of the total State sector hydropower IC of 38 plants(2058.76MWin 2018-19) in Kerala even today. Along with a few diesel (2), wind (1) and solar (22)  small power projects, KSEBL now owns an IC of just 2237.2 MW and draws in power from different external sources such that the total IC of the Kerala power system is now 2999.93 MW (as in 2018-19: Table 1).

Table 1. Installed capacity (MW) of Kerala power system

Source: KSEBL Annual administration report, various years
 

The Kerala la State Electricity Board Limited (KSEBL), the second SEB to be set up on 31.03.1957 under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1948, with the prime objective of rationalisation of power development at the State level, inherited an IC of 93.5 MW, that rose to 1995 MW by 1999-2000, as against an estimated requirement of about 3160 MW as per the 14th Annual Power Survey (APS).  This  huge demand-supply gap further widened such that in 2017-18, the system was able to meet only 87% of the energy requirement  of 23850 million units (MU; 1 unit = 1kWh). Sadly, Kerala's own energy generation accounted for only 22.4% of this energy requirement. The remaining vast deficit had to be covered with the cushioning energy import to the tune of about 80% in the recent years (Table 2). Still worse, even though own energy and import together exceeded the energy requirement (by about 2%), technical losses in transit burnt away as much as 546 MU, leaving 13% of the energy requirement still unmet! Of course, technical losses are inevitable in a power system, but its minimization is not at all impossible. This in turn can mean that the very costly energy import could well be reduced to some extent.

Table 2. Physical performance of the Kerala power system

Kannan K.P. and Pillai, N. Vijayamohanan (2002). The Plight of the Power Sector in India:Inefficiency, Reform and PoliticalEconomy, May 2002, Centre for Development Studies,Thiruvananthapuram.
KSEBL (2019) Annual Administration Report: 2018-19. Vydhyuthi Bhavan, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
KSEBL (2018) Power System Statistics 2017-18. Vydhyuthi Bhavan, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
Pillai, N. Vijayamohanan (2004) "The Power Crisis in Kerala" in BA Prakash (Ed.) Kerala's Economic Development: Performance and Problems in the Post-Liberalisation Period, Sage Publications, New Delhi: 244-265.
State Planning Board (2019) Economic Review 2019. Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.