Economics of Satellite Based Communications in Power Sector in India - Karnataka Example
- Paper number
IAC-07-B2.5.05
- Author
Mr. Adisheshan KR, India
- Year
2007
- Abstract
For an emerging economy like India, the importance of reliable, widely available electrical power to cater to the growing requirements of its industry, agriculture and consumers cannot be over emphasized. While new power generation capacities are being added, it has been realized that there is a pressing need to improve the existing power generation, transmission distribution systems to increase efficiency of generation and reduce transmission losses. The important role a good communications and IT infrastructure can play towards improvement in efficiency is now well recognized.
The SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) network in any utility, more so in power sector, is a mission critical function. In India, most of such mission critical networks, suffer huge down time resulting in substantial losses. Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL), after evaluating various communications media options to connect its remote power stations and sub-stations was the first power utility in the world to adopt in 1999 the satellite based network for real time data acquisition. The Government of India policies also allow closed user group networks to set up their own communication networks through INSAT satellites. The Vidyut Net of KPTCL has a central hub and over 100 VSATs spreads across the state of Karnataka and works through INSAT-3C satellite. Over the past eight years the hub has an uptime of 100
The economics of the system due to its high reliability and uptime is such that not only had the cost been recovered within eighteen months but also with ‘no grid’ failure over the past eight years has resulted in saving of hundreds of millions of rupees to the power corporation. Based on the experience of this network, KPTCL is expanding the network in a major way with around 1000 VSAT terminals. With the first network and with the expansion, KPTCL will be geared up to improve further the efficiency of load dispatching followed by extensive power network analysis studies like automatic generation control, reserve monitoring, economic load dispatch, load shedding support, etc. The network enables more accurate fixation of availability tariff leading to lowering of costs. This paper describes the power sector scenario in India and the importance of a satellite based communications network in improving the efficiency of the sector. The economic benefits achieved through the establishment of a satellite based real time network for power sector in Karnataka is described as an example.
- Abstract document
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