Part of India's growing power demands will soon be met with smart grid technologies that improve efficiency and reliability for businesses and consumers. North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL) has announced it would become the first major utility in India to realize the performance advantages of an advanced outage management system (OMS).
A joint venture between Tata Power, India's largest private power company and the government of Delhi, NDPL distributes electricity to approximately five million people in the Delhi metro area. 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.
These outages would have a significant impact on the economy and, as a result, the government of India is looking to smart grid technologies to improve the efficiency and the economic stability of the country's power sector.
"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. 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," said Sunil Wadhwa, CEO and executive director, NDPL.
GE's PowerOn OMS will be integrated with the previously installed GE Energy Smallworld geospatial information system (GIS) and NDPL's existing distribution management system to drive power reliability and quality.
"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% to less than 18% over the past five years."
NDPL has implemented several distribution system enhancements over the last five years, including the addition of GE Energy's Smallworld GIS. For that initiative, NDPL received the Edison Electric Institute's prestigious International Edison Award, recognizing the utility's significant improvements in operating and asset management.
Today, when an outage is detected, PowerOn and Smallworld work together to map out the location and repair needs. Repair crews are prepared with the right tools and the correct geographic information, leading to faster restoration of power.
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