Spatial informatics and Geographical Information Systems: Tools to transform Electric Power and Energy Systems

Electric Power and Energy Systems are the key for the growth of any developing country. Electric power shortage is one of the main culprits that hinder the spread of development across these countries and cause of societal disparity. Innovative Spatial Informatics and Geographical Information System Techniques have come as the boon to solve many problems in the Electric power system where demographical and geographical spread was the root cause of problem. This paper aims to give a general view of Spatial Informatics and geographical information techniques and their possible use in specific Electric power and Energy problems in changing business environment, where the customer satisfaction has a direct bearing on the profitability of a utility. The GIS medium integrates both landbase and the electrical network maps. The GIS overlays single line diagrams of the power network with updated customer, meter, and network for system planning, data analysis and reporting. Energy audit, asset management, network analysis, customer management can be accomplished by GIS functionality. GIS also provides seamless environment for applications like transient stability, long term load forecasting, load flow and short circuit analysis.

I. Introduction

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is an automated information system that is able to compile, store, retrieve, analyze and display mapped data [1]. GIS system combines various layers [fig. 1] of information about a place for better understanding and depending on the purpose, different layers can be put together for better analysis. The requirements of the different layers include, finding the best location for a new store, analyzing environmental damage, viewing similar crimes in a city to detect a pattern, keeping an overview of the electrical grid and so on. The power of a GIS over paper maps is its ability to select the information needed depending up on the intended application.