Its All About Power Sector

While grid related issues continue to happen most frequently in northern part of India, Smart grid implementation still is under pilot stages. The recent incident of sudden load crash that occurred on 30th May 2014 in parts of Delhi, UP, Haryana and Uttarakhand demand for a more quicker implementation of smart grid at a national level.

This incident is reportedly occurred as a result of bad weather (rain, dust storm/thunder storm). The incident led to a massive reduction in the demand that in turn led to widespread increase in voltage levels throughout the grid system. As a result about 68 nos. AC transmission lines along with one HVDC line has tripped. This effected a load crash of about 8000MW in Northern Region, including 3500 MW in Delhi.
As a result of this incident the demand in the northern region grid started decreasing at a rate of ~200MW/min and reached 32780 MW which is considerably a very low value compared to the demand of the previous day during the same time. The consequence was grid frequency shot up to as high as 50.65 HZ and an increase in the grid voltage level.
Actions Delivered during and after the incident occurred have been reported recently in a document published on ministry of power website. These actions probably have mitigated the adverse effects that could have happened in the event of negligence to weather report information.

• Backing down of generation to control the high frequencies besides over voltages at Inter-State Generating Stations (ISGS)/Regional entity generators was attempted. This action achieved a backing down of around 2700 MW generation in Northern Region. Similar step was taken in other parts of the country to meet exigencies.
• More than 75% of the tripped lines including one HVDC line were restored at the earliest possible time.
• Regions like Delhi are given priority in the restoration process and importance was given to restoring power to hospitals, Delhi metro, water treatment plants and NMDC area.
• Help was sought from POWERGRID where towers got damaged and alternate line are used to supply power.

All these measures were the result of an anticipated storm or bad weather condition that the weather report team conveyed. A smart grid in place would have possibly reduced this effect to a great extent with a more redundant system. The operational efficiency of the grid is better managed through a smart grid. A smart grid can sense, alert and respond with a solution to even the minute changes against the set criteria for an incident to happen.
You may comment your thoughts in the comment section below for better ways to respond to such situations and smart grid’s response to such situations.