Monday, March 25, 2019

MAKING SMART GRIDS HAPPEN IN INDIA

Virtues of flexible power demand
Grid power needs large spare generation capacities—which is expensive. Renewable power needs even higher spare capacity. India can't scale up hydro-power in a short span and open-cycle gas turbines requires expensive, imported gas. A cheaper alternative is to develop a market with dynamic pricing and consumers who can "demand respond" to grid demand-supply mismatch.

Smart meter can do more
Smart meter help to pin-point leakages and block supply. Likewise, during shortages, it can limit supply to a minimum needed for basic functions (lighting, TV, fans, electronics).

Utility death spiral
Industrial, commercial and larger residential consumers in India pay much higher bills than in US. They will be tempted to put up solar panels and come back to grid in evenings or peak times. Utility loses on all counts.

Shifting power demand
Consumers should not be forced into any change, but encouraged to shift by dynamic pricing and painless means of doing it. For example, shifting power can be done with smart technologies (smartphone app communicates and controls devices fitted to heaters, coolers, water pumps, etc). Devices should be open access to all brands of smartphones, etc.

Good and bad of EV
Electric vehicles can worsen power situation if power demand comes at peak times. But if power was drawn during surpluses—helped by dynamic pricing and automated (smart) controller—this becomes a win-win for customers and utilities!!

Smart Grids in India and back ups
Govt is piloting Smart Grid in 14 cities. Technology, security, commonality and effects of disruption has to be looked at. Cheap storage can boost EV use, and encourage private, public, commercial and industrial users to just swap their back up generators for some storage and RE.

Pump storage
Pump storage is not too expensive, but building up capacity will take time.
https://plus.google.com/100789863972538583352/posts/JeYtEkr5zdC

—✽Course of action✽—
1. Parts of smart gird (digitalisation and advanced metering) should be rolled out as they come with efficiency savings.
2. Utilities should adjust tariffs and perhaps introduce dynamic pricing for larger customers.
3. Under dynamic pricing, consumers will be willing to join with the grid in maintaining demand-supply parity. A market for sharing power will have EV owners, captive power plants, RE & storage, utility scale RE producers and industry with flexible demand.
http://www.livemint.com/Technology/zL0gQgEdnrQ0PmI1I6NloO/Making-a-smart-energy-grid-work-for-India.html


POWER GRID CORPORATION
IS Jha, Power Grid : Our market leadership is because of national presence, scale, technical expertise and low borrowing cost. In the core sector, we have upped the capex which means we are bang on target for 70% EPS growth in 3 yrs (i.e. capex goes from160k cr to ~300k cr)!! We are laying a very reliable optical fibre network which will earn good income. National grid now has capacity and flexibility to ensure one price across India, high availability (24x7 power) and easy mix-and-match of thermal, hydro & renewables. As a result, when UP & Bihar show a surge in power demand, all generators are benefited.

Renewable projects are challenging because they have short gestation and intermittent loads. We advised the govt to build a transmission backbone ("green corridors") along with dynamic compensation to deal with grid instability. Energy cost & management centre will help track costs and loads generated by one branch of the system.

Power Grid corp : Fantastic company and it's easy to understand why they are so popular. No one is able to shift them from their turf. With Bharatnet moving to optical fibre laying over power lines—which is their turf—others will not muscle in. As for growth, they have found this gem called telecom power-towers. Idea is compelling: optical fibre, power supply and right of way are in one place, so there is no need for diesel gen. sets or last-mile connectivity to the new towers.
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