LV & MV switchgear: For smart analytics in smart cities

An industry analysis on how digitised LV and MV switchgear market is contributing to real-time operation and smart analytics in smart cities and how MCBs are facilitating efficiency and safety in domestic electrical installation with pre-calculated downtime.

Digitisation has immensely helped to upgrade and make switchgears more reliable, boost performance, productivity, efficiency and also minimise transmission and operational losses. It also facilitates easier integration for power management, remote monitoring and real-time diagnostics.

Digitised LV and MV switchgear market contributing to real-time operation
As digitisation has helped evolve real-time operations, it benefits in reporting number of ON/OFF operations, errors, reason of faults with accurate date and time, which are vital source of information. These are available in a single click at one’s convenience and useful for users. Moreover, installation of digital switchgears contributes to increased operational efficiency. For instance, medium-voltage switchgear at 11 kV and consisting of 30 panels, in such configuration, the width can be reduced by around 7 per cent and switchgear energy consumption can be reduced by around 300MWh, during its lifetime.

Gautam Seth, Joint Managing Director, HPL Electric & Power Ltd says, “With its strong R&D, HPL has introduced one more innovative product with the latest technology, Osafe MCB. The company’s entire range of switchgear products such as ACBs, MCCBs, fuse gears, metering products have inbuilt communication ports and facilitate them to combine with upstream plan control and monitoring system.”

LV components, these days, are communication capable and have functions available which can help industries check the real time data to analyse and operate in a scenario. According to Piyush Garg, Additional- Director, Balaji Switchgears this can help them prevent and predict their maintenance and shut down, thus saving their CAPEX and OPEX cost. He further says, “Reports which we can generate from these smart switchgears are more reliable and accurate as compare to the traditional data fetching technique.”

With the Government of India initiative of smart city and a massive budget of over 2.7 billion $ and over 100 smart cities being built in next 5 years, smart LV & MV switchgears would be a boon in increasing the efficiency of all the installation and getting real time accurate data to analyse the performance and reduce functional down time.

All the switchgears providers have their own communication platform, through which they provide IOT enabled solutions right from the transformer to final distribution level. On the bigger picture, power generation utilities can monitor their exact production and consumables, along with the end user who can monitor the energy consumption at his home/office level.

Improve efficiency and cut maintenance costs
“Final distribution has always been the essential key in any electrical installation. End user is always connected to it, whether it be home/office or any industries. Each one of us has the basic access only to the final distribution products of which MCBs is a major part,” states Garg.

In past 2 decades, these installations have shifted extensively from traditional fuse units to MCBs, which are more user friendly even for a layman with better safety standards. Also, the downtime in case of any fault, is almost negligible with no additional cost in case of circuit failure, which used to be there in case of traditional fuses.

With smart communication capable MCBs, we now have the access to the entire domestic electrical installation on our smart phones, and making our facilities better in terms of efficiency and safety with pre-calculated downtime, through these connected products. Seth says, “HPL follows a meticulous risk assessment procedure before commencement of work. In addition to this, security personnel are assigned to follow required safety measures and procedures to eliminate any hazards. Besides, trapped key interlocking system is used in MCCBs that ensure safety levels in switchgears.”

MCCBs are assigned to protect systems against overload and short circuit up to 65KA, with full range of accessories. TAB series provides multiple advance features, such as distribution feeder protection, transformer protection, which provides effective protection to distribution transformers as outgoing breakers. Seth explains, “DG set protection is used for safeguarding and control the diesel generating sets, against overload and short circuits. Similarly, motor protection provides safeguards for motor back-up and also provides type-2 co-ordination (as per IEC 60947), in conjunction with suitably rated contractors and relays. Capacitor protection, UPS protection, DC load protection suitable for both AC as well as DC application is used for protecting rectifying panel.”

With smart communication capable MCBs, we have access to our entire domestic electrical installation on our smart phones with pre-calculated downtime through these connected products.
Gautam Seth, Join Managing Director, HPL Electric & Power Ltd.

Final distribution has always been the essential key in any electrical installation. Each one of us has the basic access only to the final distribution products of which MCBs is a major part.
Piyush Garg, Additional-Director, Balaji Switchgears.