Smart grid development in India — A case study

Consistent high growth of Indian economy has resulted in a surging demand for energy. Since, independence Indian power system has grown from 1362 MW to 250GW. In the past decade, installation of renewable sources of energy for electricity has grown at an annual rate of 25%, which has reached 29,500 MW as on March 2014. Despite this, presently 400 million people in the country have no access to electricity and hundreds of millions get electricity for only a few hours. Distribution system is suffering from frequent and long duration outages. To supplement capacity addition as well as electrification of remote areas, development of micro-grid also needs attention. Standalone/decentralized micro grid can provide basic energy access to all. Presently, high AT&C losses of utilities are resulting into poor financial health of distribution utilities across the country. To address these issues and bring efficiency, seamless integration of emerging technologies in the field of monitoring, automation, control, communication and IT systems with active participation of all stakeholders are inevitable. It is expected that the far-reaching goals of modern Indian power system can be achieved by deployment of smart grids which can help to improve efficiency of Indian power sector. In this direction, several initiatives have been taken to implement smart grid in entire supply value chain - generation, transmission distribution and consumer participation in power sector. This paper presents initiatives taken by Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. (POWERGRID) to implement Smart Grid in Indian Power System as a case study on Puducherry Smart Grid Pilot Project.