17 new islanding schemes planned for major cities to ensure electricity supply
Premium- Such islands would isolate a grid disturbance, restricting it to a particular region and also allow essential services to function
NEW DELHI : In an attempt to protect India’s power grids, 17 new “islanding schemes" have been planned for major cities, in addition to 26 existing and under implementation ones to isolate the fallout of a grid disturbance, the Union power ministry said on Friday.
Such islands would isolate a grid disturbance, restricting it to a particular region and also allow essential services such as water-supplies, telecom infrastructure, hospitals, airports or metro rail network to function.
This assumes importance given that four out of India’s five regional load despatch centres (RLDCs) that help oversee the country’ critical electricity load management functions have witnessed cyberattacks. Red Echo, a hacker group affiliated with the Chinese government, has repeatedly targeted India’s power grid earlier this year.
“Secretary, ministry of power reviewed all the existing and planned islanding schemes in Indian power system [on Thursday] here with Central Electricity Authority (CEA), all five Regional Power Committees (RPCs), PGCIL and POSOCO," the power ministry said in a statement.
It is the state-run Posoco that oversees the grid through the National Load Dispatch Centre (NLDC), the five RLDCs and 34 state load despatch centres (SLDCs). The grid is under constant attack, with at least 30 events reported daily, as reported by Mint earlier. A majority of the attacks originate from China, Singapore, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.
“CEA (Central Electricity Authority) was advised to ensure the functional aspect of the existing islanding schemes and also design islanding schemes for major cities. In such electrical islanded system, the essential loads should be identified and covered so that these load continue to be served even during any major outage," the statement said.
This comes against the backdrop of India’s grid collapse in 2012. India’s worst blackout left nearly 620 million people across 19 states and three Union territories without electricity for hours together when the northern grid collapsed on 31 July 2012, and, in a wider blackout, the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids broke down on 1 August 2012.
“CEA further informed that they have advised all the SLDCs to set up a separate display of islanding scheme on SCADA for real time monitoring of participating generators and critical load and the same display would also be available at respective RLDCs/SLDCs/Sub SLDCs. This will help in real time monitoring of load generation balance of such electrical Islands which is the essence of successful islanding," the statement said.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) coordinates efforts on cybersecurity issues with the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) overseeing India’s cybersecurity operations in critical sectors. The Union power ministry on its part has set up six Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) for grid operation , thermal, hydropower, electricity distribution, transmission and renewable energy. India also has a National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC).
“This will be replicated for all the islanding schemes in the country. These islanding schemes would ensure maintenance of essential services and also faster restoration of supply to the electricity consumers in the event of any outage," the statement added.
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