Smart Grid a weapon to fight blackouts

Smart Grid a weapon to fight blackoutsOpen collaboration across the industry to find cost-effective solutions is need of the hour to fight blackouts in IndiaSrikanth Chandrasekaran, Standards Senior Manager for India, IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA)In multiple ways, the developing smartgrid figures to help India avoid and/or limit the impact of blackouts. Technology and standards development in a range of areas is intended, in part, to help render traditional systems of power generation, transmission and distribution grow more efficient, reliable and resilient.Some of these technical issues that frequently lead to blackouts in India will be avoided by closely synchronising demand and response across the grid; integrating power producers and utilities with business and residential customers; and building a heightened capability for monitoring and automated event response. For example, the smartgrid stands to help with one particularly vexing local problem: transmission and distribution losses (estimated at between 10-15 per cent in India). By building a more efficient grid, such losses can be reduced, requiring less generation to serve peak demands; thereby, averting some blackouts that otherwise might occur.Of course, some blackouts will still occur. For instance, the smartgrid will not prevent towers being knocked out during a monsoon. Here again, though, grid modernisation and advanced applications such as microgrids and integration of distributed generators can deliver valuable benefits. The developing smartgrid can help limit the range of business and residential users that are impacted during outages and help power be backed up and running more quickly to the affected.Standards and technology development in areas such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), distributed generation, microgrids, phasor measurement units (PMUs) and cyber security figure to be of prime interest to India’s smartgrid stakeholders as they are fertile ground for the innovations that could dramatically improve outage management.AMI Smart meters, communications systems, meter data management systems and other AMI are critical elements for eliminating or mitigating against blackouts. From intelligence gleaned from smart meters, for example, utilities can help home in on the particular customer sectors that have lost power so that repair personnel can be more precisely and efficiently dispatched, leading to quicker service restoration. Among the more than 100 active or in-development IEEE standards that are intended to support smartgrid functionality are several that are specifically focused on AMI, including:

IEEE 1701™ “Standard for Optical Port Communication Protocol to Complement the Utility Industry End Device Data Tables” and IEEE 1702™ “Standard for Telephone Modem Communication Protocol to Complement the Utility Industry End Device Data Tables,” which define criteria required for transporting data between multi-vendor end devices such as handheld readers, laptop or portable computers and master station systems, and
IEEE 1703™ “Standard for Local Area Network/Wide Area Network (LAN/WAN) Node Communication Protocol to Complement the Utility Industry End Device Data Tables,” which defines uniform, managed, adaptive and secure network data and message delivery across utility meters, home appliances, communications technology and other devices.
IEEE 1701, IEEE 1702 and IEEE 1703 work together to support a “plug-and-play” environment of interchangeable AMI, which will be necessary to maximise cost efficiency and flexibility in building out capabilities for outage management in the smartgrid.Distributed GenerationDistributed generation sources of power—especially renewables—is of terrific interest among India’s smartgrid developers because of the country’s National Smartgrid Mission, “Quality Power on Demand for All by 2027.”  An estimated third of India’s huge population today has no reliable access to grid power. So, adding so many more users in the next 14 years will demand a significant expansion of generation sources, given that power demand in India often already outpaces supply.Renewable sources of distributed generation are particularly attractive to India’s smartgrid stakeholders because of their potential to keep in check the nation’s carbon footprint and because of their long-term cost-effectiveness relative to non-renewable sources. (Already, solar is cost-competitive with diesel as a backup power source in India.) The issue with renewable sources is their unpredictability—the intermittency of when the sun shines and when the wind blows must be accounted for if grid reliability and stability, power quality and consumer and worker safety are to be preserved. This is the basic challenge for which the IEEE 1547™ family of standards has been developed.The base standard—IEEE 1547 “Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems”—is a globally leveraged reference for performance, operation, testing, safety considerations and maintenance parameters related to interconnection of distributed generation technologies of 10 MegaVolt Ampere (MVA) or less at the point of common coupling with the grid. Since its initial publication in 2003, distributed generation technologies and applications have matured, and lessons learned through global deployments have informed expansion of a series of “dot” extension standards to enhance capabilities and address emerging market needs:

IEEE 1547.1™-2005 “Standard Conformance Test Procedures for Equipment Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems;”
IEEE 1547.2™-2008 “Application Guide for IEEE Std 1547, IEEE Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems;”

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