SMART CITY GRID PROJECT

HIMANI BAHUGUNA

Chandigarh

Under the Smart Grid project, the UT electricity department has now started the area wise survey of the households where the smart meters will be installed. In the first phase of the pilot project which has been approved by the National Smart Grid Mission (NSGM) four sectors and six villages has been selected where the 30 thousand smart meters will be replaced by the older meters. The project will be costing Rs 28 cores. Under this project, the electricity department UT will build a control room in sector 18. The list includes, four sectors -29, 31, 47, 48 and six villages, Ramdarbar, Fiada, Hallo Majara, Behlana, Raipur kalan, Makhhan Majara and Daria. The project which has been tagged as advance metering infrastructure will also be covering Industrial area phase I, II. Confirming the same, a senior official of the electricity department said, “The Analogics Company, which has been hired for the pilot project has started the process of the doing the area wise survey where the smart meters will be installed. Once the survey is completed, the installation work will be finished in seven months.” He said that, in the survey the company officials are inspecting that to install the smart electrical meters what is required in every areas, where these smart meters will be installed.

“The smart meters will be helping the electricity department to measure the load, voltage, outage, peak hour demand and consumption across the city and In case of tripping of the main line, an instant alert will go to the control room and the problem will be resolved immediately,” he said. For the project, last year in the October month, the UT administration had finalised the company for installing the smart meters. With this the smart grid project in the entire city will be completed at a cost of Rs 241 crores, while the administration had demanded an amount of Rs 260 crores, but technical committee of NSGM had approved only 241 crores. Meanwhile, in the month of July last year, the work was allotted to Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (RECL), was allotted the work of installing the smart meters but the company then hired the work to the MS Analogics company for the pilot project. After which the MS Analogics company has now started the survey on the pilot project.

BOX: PROJECT WILL BE CONTROLLED THROUGH SCADA

The supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) will be controlling the entire pilot project. SCADA is software that allows monitoring, gathering, and process real-time data will be helping the electricity department to monitor the performance of transformers. Through this software the power connection of any consumer will be automatically be cut if he had consumed more than the set consumption limit. With this the consumer will also get a message for the same. The system will also be helpful to know where the power line has been broken or any fault, also informing the area Sub Divisional officers. Under this project if there is power cut in any area, then through SCADA the area will be automatically joined with the other station through a computerised system. The electricity billing will be generated from the SCADA only. The system will also help in cracking the whip on power thieves, as if there will be any tampering with the electricity, the real time details of such power thieves will be shared thorough SCADA, after which legal action against such person and will even cut their connections.

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