Towards a Smarter Grid
Towards a Smarter Grid
Jul 31
Over 600 million people faced a massive blackout today when three electricity grids connecting more than 20 states and the national capital collapsed. The northern grid failed for the second straight day, the eastern and north-eastern grids too collapsed. Considered as the biggest ever power failure in India and one of the world’s worst power outage, this affected half of Indian population which went powerless, while highlighting the frail power system in the country.
800 long-distance and commuter trains were stranded en route. Normal life came to a grinding halt in the national capital and the vicinity. Delhi Metro was shut several hours, leading to severe commuting problems across Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. Traffic lights also mostly failed, causing added chaos on the roads. Water supply ran out in several areas. And the roads were choked with commuters trying to make it to work. Unfortunately, this stretched on for hours. It’s not hard to imagine the scale of magnitude of human suffering waking up to a powerless morning in horrid weather conditions.
Even after the power is restored, the reason for the power failure in the supply chain is still being debated upon widely. Unfortunately, almost half of the electricity generated in the country is lost on its way to homes and businesses – like a bucket with a big hole. Some of the losses are due to theft, but much of it is poor infrastructure.
Such crisis scenarios caused by surging power demands and lack of sophisticated management, force us to think….have we arrived yet, are we really a developed nation. While power supply has improved a lot since the last decade, there is a lot needs to be done in managing power. The good news is increasingly electric utilities and policy makers in India have started looking at smart grid technologies seriously; and few pilot implementations are already on the immediate horizon.
Can digital intelligence help us plug in the holes in the electric power sector in India? The answer is, yes. Fortunately, our energy production and delivery systems can be made smarter. It can be managed like the complex global system it is. We can now instrument everything from appliances and the meter in the home to the turbines in the power plants and can be monitored and controlled on real time. to the network itself. In fact, the intelligent utility system will actually looks a lot more like the Internet than like a traditional grid. It can be linked to thousands of power sources — including climate-friendly ones such as wind and solar. All of this instrumentation then generates new data, which advanced analytics can turn into insight, so that better decisions by key stakeholders of the value chain can be made in real time. The whole system can become more efficient, reliable, adaptive…smarter!.
Our electrical grids can be a symbol of progress again — if we imbue the entire system with digital intelligence. The decisions made today about the world’s electricity networks will impact our lives for decades to come. What this requires is perpetual collaboration amongst the ecosystem, and leveraging IT smartly to switch on to a bright future.
By Dhamodaran Ramakrishnan
The blogger is Director, Smarter Planet Solutions, IBM India/South Asia
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Dhamodaran, these are good points but you have missed a very important factor here. The Indian transmission network is controlled by advanced computer systems called SCADA/ EMS (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition/ Energy Management Systems) which are supplied by global suppliers like Alstom Grid (for NRLDC and National Load Dispatch Center, Delhi) and GE’s XA/21 at four Regional Load Dispatch Centers-West, East, South and North-East. The SCADA/ EMS is the brain of the transmission network and has advanced software applications to detect overdrawal by states, to conduct system stability analysis, to detect grid under frequency and several other features. The so called investigation report that was promised in 15 days will be written by the same people who were responsible for this power outage – a classic situation of the thief writing a criminal report. The important questions for NRLDC and NLDC dispatchers/ engineers are:
1. Did the SCADA detect the states overdrawal limit when it hot 90% capacity? I am quite confident that all systems will issue an alarm to dispatchers
2. The systems are designed to automatically open the breaker feeding the state grid (or) issue warning signals
3. The SCADA system has Operator Training Simulator (OTS) like Flight Simulators where dispatchers are continously trained to simulate overdrawal and fault conditions. Did NLDC train operators with such condition?
4. The SCADA system’s advanced application can issue alarms and reports when the grid stability is not very good, especially when states are drawing power beyond what has been allotted.
Almost all advanced countries use the same SCADA/ EMS technology and are used to prevent such massive outages. The SCADA systems in India are several generations behind current software technology (our usual Indian mindset of continuing with status quo) and Power Grid Corp should immediately upgrade these computer systems and put in place better system monitoring conditions. It appears that the Northern power grid was on auto pilot mode with no controls and supervision in place. The bottom line is that the Power system is as good as the tools that monitor the network. Rest are all long term measures to solve the power crisis in India.
That smarter systems are needed on an emergency basis goes without doubt, in the wske of this massive outage. We certainly need a reality check and predictions to forecast usage. Digital intelligence is perhaps the answer. Along with this, we also need ‘intelligent education’ to be driven right across the spectrum. We need to go beyond the emotional pitch and take forward our education based on facts and analysis. As our population increases, our consumption too increases in proporation or even beyond its capacity. Inventions and better comforts call for more utilization. It is therefore absolutely imperative to work out a solution that cuts across the spectrum…Different agencies and orgaizations will have to pool in their talent and skills to make it happen. More will be heard and spoken about in the next few months. Let’s hope the conversations, translate into actions immediately.
The current blackout in India indeed calls for a automated and efficient Electric Transmission & Distribution Network. I definitely agree with Dhamodaran Sir’s views on the same.Smart Grid will not only provide automated means to switch to alternatives in ase of outages, but also, it would help in implementing consumer-friendly energy utilisation tracking and usage.Being a Technical Consultant-utilities and looking at the implementation of SmartGrid in countries like USA, I strongly feel that the need of the same is much more in India where we have a big and subdivided electric network.The country would certainly benefit from the implementation of Smart Grid technology.The biggest advantage would be reducing the energy loss from transmision to distribution network which itself would reduce the cost and energy losses.With the advent of technology, the common man is now more aware about the energy consumption. With a better Customer-aware and technically automated and reliable concept, I think Smart Grid is the right choice.
Latest technology doesn’t hold all the answers to our problems. You talk of smarter grid, I think when are we going to get smarter users, smarter government, and simple solutions. Like everything else that we abuse, steal and squander in India, we do the same with power. When we stop stealing and wasting power, when we demand and encourage solar energy development through real incentives, then we might see a real change but not until then.