India Requires Solutions to Upgrade Ageing Transmission Network
Enzen, a global energy and environment company providing high-end solutions to the energy and utilities industries, organized Zen Dialogues, a symposium on future electricity grids & utilities, in the city today. The one day symposium brought together the best minds from academia, industry and governments to share experiences, ideas, challenges, and discussed pathways to bring tangible change in Indian energy sector.
Mr. P Ravi Kumar, Additional Chief Secretary, Energy Department, Government of Karnataka, underlined the need for finding ICT solutions and allied innovations to meet the surge in demand for power in a fast growing economy.
According to Mr. Ravi, it is important to look at distributed generation to mitigate the problems of transmission and distribution (T&D). Large generation projects are not viable anymore for a population that is dispersed and located in remote areas. In this context he referred to the concept of smart grids, saying, “there is no clear definition on what a smart grid is.
Therefore, he maintained that while smart grids may be a part of the solution, “we have to wait and watchâ€. So far the solutions that had been showcased were extremely expensive and difficult to implement. In the same vein, he referred to the renewables, adding there is a downside too particularly in relation to grid integration, variable generation and unreliable generation. In fact, hydel power generation had become a problem following environmental concerns.
Mr. Pankaj Pandey, Managing Director, BESCOM, said that his organization is running a model of solar generation from the fields of the farmers, which not only met their demand for power while the excess electricity is wheeled into the grid. According to him, already the government had formed a cooperative society among farmers to ensure that illegal pumps are weeded out.
On feeder separation which BESCOM launched in 2010, he said the exercise had proved beneficial. Today the rural areas were not being neglected because they had come on near par with city consumers in terms of availability and supply in relation to their requirement. Besides, with the farmers’ involvement, the state was able to generate 300MW of renewable energy.
Earlier, Mr. Kutty Prabhakar, CEO, Enzen Group, said the power sector is witnessing interesting dynamics. On one side there was the distributed generation and micro grids. On the other there was the active participation from consumers who were also becoming a producer of power. There is a huge demand on the grid and therefore it has to become more agile, flexible and robust to address most of the current challenges while remaining economical. In this connection, he felt that Smart grids could potentially increase global energy efficiency by up to 19 per cent by 2030, saving about 600 Million KWh each year.
Speaking on development in the electricity sector in India from a policy perspective, Ms. Sandhya Sundararaghavan, Research Scientist, C Step, said that there was immense potential for micro grids besides promotion of community based solar power. In this context, she emphasized the need for a strong grid infrastructure apart from mandatory feeding and distribution transformer metering. Besides, she said it would be necessary to mandate consumer indexing and Geographic Information System mapping of assets apart from scaling up small metering and communication system.
Dr. Neal Wade, Senior Research Associate, Newcastle University, spoke about the trends, development and challenges in the electricity sector in the UK. He explained that the UK proposed to do away with coal based plants by 2025 to bring down carbon emissions while emphasizing the use of gas instead.
Mr. Antonius Van Megen, Co-Founder, Auroville Consulting, spoke about the growing need for consumers to plumb for net metering, including group net metering as it is extremely helpful. According to him the possibility of virtual net metering becoming a reality could not be ruled out, evidenced by the Delhi government’s plans. About the future electricity grids, he felt that in the years to come a few power plants would be able to feed millions of consumers. The future, he said, would be bidirectional, consumers would also be producers of power, going by the popularity of roof top solar units.
