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GE Power Launches Advanced Management System in Delhi

Maintaining a reliable supply of power in Delhi, India, has been a major issue for the area as local demand for electricity continues to increase. The city in June repeatedly set new records for electricity load, coming close to 7,000 MW, topping the previous mark of 6,526 MW set last year. The city’s power minister, Satyendar Jain, earlier this year said, “We have enough backhand arrangements to meet the power demand that is expected to soar up to a historic 7,000 MW level in June this year.”

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1. In need of an upgrade. The power grid in Delhi, India, serves millions of people but is being tested by increased demand for electricity. Record loads already have been reached several times this year. A new system from GE Power Grid Solutions, in concert with local provider Tata Power Delhi Distribution, is expected to help manage the power supply while making it more resilient and efficient. Courtesy: Creative Commons

GE Power Grid Solutions, along with Tata Power Delhi Distribution (Tata Power-DDL), in June announced it has launched what it considers a first-of-its-kind Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) to modernize and enhance the area’s grid (Figure 1). The system is designed to improve the reliability, safety, and efficiency of Delhi’s power distribution network, which serves more than 7 million people in the north and west parts of the city, where peak loads are expected to top 2,000 MW. The system also is designed to help restore power more quickly after outages. The ADMS allows Tata Power-DDL to have one view for information along its network.

Tata Power CEO Sanjay Banga in a news release said: “Technology is critical for innovation and creating new paradigms each passing day. We aim to create a utility of the future delivering smarter and sustainable power distribution through integration of complex technological domains. The new ADMS in collaboration with GE will enable us to further improve on our service and help us in achieving our objective of providing world class quality power supply to our consumers.”

GE said the ADMS helps solve Tata Power’s problem of multiple independent and inter-connected systems that require complex data management, which has a negative impact on upgrading the network and the speed of restoring power. The ADMS system integrates supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), an outage management system (OMS), and distribution management system (DMS) on one platform. It includes a unified database that can be created and/or updated automatically based on information from the geographical information system (GIS).

GE Power said this is its first project in India incorporating GIS, DMS, and OMS. Sunil Wadhwa, regional leader for GE Power’s Grid Solutions business, South Asia, and managing director, GE T&D India Ltd., in a release said, “Our partnership with Tata Power-DDL is a key initiative in their consistent pursuit of providing best-in-class services to the people of Delhi. With the addition of ADMS technology, Tata Power-DDL will further strengthen Delhi’s distribution system in terms of network reliability and efficiency.”

GE said the system will help with grid maintenance, back-feeding affected areas through other sources of power supply and providing faster restoration of power while also predicting and providing the time of restoration to customers. The system also allows for monitoring the current power situation on mobile devices in real-time. GE said the ADMS will move Tata Power-DDL toward smart grid implementation with its ability to monitor load patterns and availability of power. “The system also allows seamless integration with mobile crew management system; therefore, it can immediately direct the nearest available crew to restore the outage. Equipped with such robust features, our ADMS technology will certainly enhance the quality of power for the residents of North and North-West Delhi,” said Deepak Pandey, regional service leader for GE Grid Solutions Software Solutions, GE Power in India, in a news release.

Darrell Proctor is a POWER associate editor.

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