India is a fast-emerging economy where the demand for electric power is increasing by leaps and bounds. This can be visualised from the fact that while holding more that 17 per cent of the world's population, India currently consumes around 3 to 4 per cent of the world's electrical energy.
As India strides forward on her economic journey, the demand and consumption of electrical energy by its populace is going to increase dramatically. Yet, although 70 per cent of Indians live in villages, there are still thousands of villages with no or inadequate access to electricity.
In developing economies such as ours, energy efficiency enhancement technologies such as smart grids can leapfrog development by harnessing distributed energy resources, which nature has so generously bestowed on us.
Smart grids use a combination of digital communication and digital control technology to despatch power with minimum loss. Power may be generated either centrally in large power stations operated by utilities or by local, small generators using green and renewable energy resources.
Why smart?
The ‘smart' digital components communicate and compute the most efficient routes to despatch power to loads, resulting in a better quality of supply. The digital communication elements notify all parts of the grid rapidly in case of breakdowns so that alternative routes for power despatch may be computed. This combination of computation and communication is where the ‘smartness' of the smart grid lies.
For the average Indian city- or town-dweller, the development of the smart grid would mean better quality of power. Voltage and frequency fluctuations would be eliminated, especially the low voltage and frequency conditions of summer, making power outages and load-shedding relics of a dark past.
Lure with incentives
Deployment could be accelerated through incentives to consumers who install smart grid equipment. For example, consumers installing solar panels or micro wind turbines on their premises may feed the excess power generated into the regional grid, which the utility may buy at special rates called ‘ feed-in tariffs', thereby allowing the consumer to recover the cost of installation within a reasonable period.
A large percentage of India's rural population cannot afford to pay more than a few rupees per day on energy. Setting up smart mini/ micro-grids, which are self-contained energy grids based on local renewable energy resources, would bring low-cost electricity, enabling the country to leapfrog to total rural electrification.
Potentially, these grids could revolutionise lives in rural India. With the availability of low-cost electricity, working hours in a day would be extended, improving the quality of life. Electricity would be available for agriculture, animal husbandry, mobile communication, data connectivity and healthcare systems in villages.
Practical implementation of the smart grid in India will need a great deal of research, development and industrialisation to obtain designs optimised for cost, efficiency and reliability in our unique conditions. In addition, standardisation of equipment modules and operating procedures is necessary to ensure systematic proliferation.
Green energy
The Union Government has mandated generation and use of non-conventional green energy resources and formulated comprehensive policies in keeping with the mandate, so that our unique ecosystems are protected and marginalised populations in poverty-stricken communities can avail themselves of energy at low costs.
The smart grid technology goes a long way in addressing the technical complexities introduced by green energy resources-based generation as well as in increasing the efficiency of generation and distribution systems.
(The author is Principal Member Technical Staff in Advanced Systems Technologies, STMicroelectronics)
