Automation in power distribution needs to catch up faster

Automation in power distribution needs to catch up faster
“Volume wise, India would be figured in the list of first five or six countries, whereas when it is compared to leveraging automation for power distribution, we are far behind.” – Partha Bhaumik, Industry Sales Manager-Power, Rockwell Automation India
High aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses in power distribution and slow rate of reform continue to be a few of the key challenges amazing the Indian power minds. Such losses will force financial bleeding of distribution companies which is very predominant with SEB segment. Mr Bhaumik shares his views on automation in power distribution sector.
Power distribution sector in IndiaA great percentage of Indian rural population is not yet connected to the grid. There are industrial and urban pockets which rely on expensive local generation due to inadequacies in the distribution network. Growth in key elements of distribution network has barely kept pace with generation capacity increase. Accelerated distribution infrastructure modernisation and achieving fast improvements in this value chain is extremely important for sustainable growth of Indian power sector.
Revenue management is an important aspect of healthy operation for a distribution company.  Lack of information on loading and status of distribution transformers and associated feeders has been one primary cause of inefficient power distribution. Due to absence of monitoring, overloading occurs resulting in low voltage at consumer end and fallout could be frequent breakdown of transformers and feeders. Finer load management, intelligent load-shedding, precise fault finding, fault isolation and quick restoration are the necessities for revenue maximisation. 
Leveraging automation and information technology better monitoring and control of distribution assets can be enabled. Energy distributed and consumed with power quality data history and losses can be tracked with finer management and distribution of energy. Electricity theft which is a great percentage of energy loss in India can be tracked by deploying appropriate automation infrastructure. Automation technology contributes significantly in bringing down the distribution losses thus facilitating revenue protection for a distribution company.
Leveraging automation technologiesPower generation sector has been fully leveraging the value proposition of automation technology for process control, BOP systems and remote monitoring. Whether a coal-fired boiler, turbine, hydro turbine or nuclear power plant, automation has been deployed to control the core generation process. This sector, however, needs to fully leverage the benefits of energy efficiency technology or start implementing the benefits of intelligent motor control solution which maximises the protection of rotating assets by bringing in proactive intelligence in monitoring, preventing unscheduled downtime.

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