Power Quality monitoring in India

Demonstrating poor quality

For electricity consumers in India, supply interruptions and low voltage levels are a constant source of concern. Utility companies recognize the problem and are now making major investments to improve Power Quality (PQ). However these improvements are coupled to tariff increases. To verify if real PQ improvements have been made, effective monitoring of the supply quality is crucial. Monitoring also helps track the sources of interruptions and enable comparisons of PQ at various locations.

Governments and regulatory commissions in India use IEEE developed reliability indices such as CAIDI, SAIDI, and SAIFI. These indices require extensive measurements and complex calculations and their use is still in an initial phase in India.

Prayas has now developed a complementary tool, the Electricity Supply Monitoring Initiative (ESMI). Prayas is an Indian non-governmental, non-profit public charitable trust involved with health, energy, learning, and parenthood initiatives. The concept of ESMI is to execute basic monitoring of supply continuity and voltage levels at ordinary consumer locations, in order to get an idea of the actual situation in the field and to increase the accountability of electricity utilities. A data logger records the supply voltage at one minute intervals, as well as the timing and duration of supply interruptions.

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My car is saving the food in the freezer

A car and emergency power supply all in one

The more we rely on electric power, the more vulnerable we become when there is a grid power outage. Is that an argument against the development of electric cars? ‘We won’t even be able to recharge our car batteries during a power outage,’ critics say.

A small California-based company, AC Propulsion, has turned this potential disadvantage into an advantage. It has developed battery systems for cars that can be charged by plugging into the house mains as well as delivering electricity back to the house. That would make it possible to run lights, the freezer and even electric heaters off the energy stored in the car.

And if these battery systems are used in a plug-in hybrid vehicle, they can be paired with the car’s gasoline engine to recharge the batteries. So you will still be able to drive if necessary during, or immediately after, a power outage.

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One Mwh for £449

Preventing a power shortage on the UK grid on 19 July 2006

One of the hottest days on record in the UK was 19 July 2006. That day, between 9:25 and 13:25, RWE-Npower sold 793 MW of the Fawley power plant for no less than £449/MWh.

Earlier in the morning, the UK’s National Grid Company had issued a system-wide alert, warning of a possible power shortage. Such warnings are issued to encourage generation companies to bring additional power plants online and industry to cut demand. The warning was cancelled after RWE-Npower announced it would bring in its expensive oil-fired Fawley power plant.

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