GE Power on Thursday announced the commissioning of the first leg of the mega grid-stabilization project by handing over Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) solution to Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) for the Northern Grid (NR) in India. The project is part of the Unified Real Time Dynamic State Measurement (URTDSM) initiative that entails monitoring and controlling of the electricity supply across the country. The project has been executed by GE T&D India Limited, listed entity of GE Power’s Grid Solution business in India.
This first stage will enable PGCIL to monitor power flow across 110 substations in the Northern Grid (NR) and respond to fluctuations within a fraction of a second. This will be critical in addressing power demand-supply imbalances and ensuring grid stability benefitting from the integration of renewable energy with the grid. The northern grid covers nine control centers, namely Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh. When fully commissioned, this new WAMS solution will be the world’s largest comprising 1,184 Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and 34 control centers across India, 350 substations in the national grid.
Part of GE Power’s Digital Energy portfolio, this solution obtains input data 25 times per second from all the PMUs installed, with real time views on geographic displays, analytical applications and the capacity to store 500 TB of data.
Moreover, it will also fully secure the grid from any cyber security threat, incorporating the latest firewall policies. In July 2012, India suffered the world’s biggest power blackout due to a grid failure which impacted more than 620 million people across 22 states. A committee of international experts formed by the government to minimize the future possibility and impact of grid failure recommended the implementation of a Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) solution across the country to measure the dynamic state of the grid and detect the onset of any unstable oscillation event. Under the URTDSM (Unified Real Time Dynamic State Measurement) project, bids were invited by PGCIL for installing 1184 Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) at 351 substations and 34 control centers across India. Seventy per cent of the project cost is funded by the Ministry of Power through the Power System Development Fund (PSDF). The contract covers the supply of both hardware and software solutions.
GE Power’s WAMS offers a vast improvement over existing grid monitoring systems such as Energy Management Systems (EMS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems (SCADA).
Source: UNI
