With the money people have already invested for buying power back-up systems, the country could have set up power plants with a capacity of 25,000 MW, he said.

To find a solution to the power woes, the government should go for rapid capacity build-up. Resources for this could be raised by charging a 'reliability surcharge' of 50 paise per unit on consumers, Rajagopalan said.

'The surcharge is far less than what people spend on their power back-up systems,' he added.

The study covered 1,500 respondents across 21 cities.