Part of India’s growing power demands will soon be met with smart grid technologies following the decision by North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL) to insrall an advanced outage management system (OMS).
The Indian firm, which distributes electricity to around five million people in the Delhi metro area, has chosen GE Energy’s PowerOn OMS to help it to accurately detect the location of faults on its grid. The system will be integrated with a previously installed GE Energy Smallworld geospatial information system (GIS) and NDPL’s existing distribution management system to drive power reliability and quality.
According to the International Energy Agency, India’s energy demand will more than double by 2030, potentially increasing the frequency of power outages even in the most developed areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The government of India is therefore looking to smart grid technologies to improve the efficiency and the economic stability of the country’s power sector.
NDPL is a joint venture between Tata Power and the government of Delhi.
“With PowerOn, coupled with automatic meter infrastructure, NDPL will be able to identify the local faults more precisely, and the repair crew will be remotely instructed and dispatched even before the consumer calls,” said Sunil Wadhwa, CEO and executive director, NDPL. “This will eventually be supplemented by a crew management system that will track the position of the crew nearest to the fault location.
“I am confident that our consumers will benefit immensely from the powerful outage management tool by way of short outage durations.”
“Our smart grid solutions suite will immediately help NDPL in its ongoing quest to improve the quality and reliability of service while reducing technical and commercial power losses,” said Gursharan Bhatia, general manager of GE Energy’s transmission and distribution business in India. “As a result of NDPL’s automation strategy, the utility has already reduced losses from 54 per cent to less than 18 per cent over the past five years.”
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