With the severe power shortages being faced in southern India, owing to poor monsoons, the question begging an answer is: will a national grid solve the problem? Or will it compound it?
The problem is that of matching frequencies. As of now, the North-Eastern, Eastern, Northern and Western Regional grids have already been synchronised to form an integrated grid of more than 90,000 MW capacity. In the 11th Five Year Plan, when the Southern Regional grid is also expected to be synchronised with the rest of the system, the entire country’s power system will be operating as one large interconnected grid.
Is that a good idea? Or will it mean that sabotage/glitches will have wide undesired effects?
Yes it allows exchange of power and open access.
Going further, is it a good idea to build the national grid with a view to integrating renewable energy into the grid? With renewable energy the problem is that of daily variation. Will feeding it across long distance HVDC lines reduce this variation?
What will the costs be like, to integrate all distributed generation systems, at village cluster levels, industry and residential levels?
Let us have some discussions.
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3 comments:
Constructing a nation-wide grid is a very expensive proposition considering the vastness of the country. Villages which account for about 70 percent of the population of the country are spread across hundreds of square kilometers.
First, huge pylons need to be erected (that too on agricultural land) and thousands of kilometers of cables are to be drawn on them to carry 11 kV power. Then step down transformers are required to be installed near every habitation to reduce the voltage in steps from 11 kV to standard 220 V. This system is very highly capital incentive. Then about 30 percent of power would be lost in transmission.
The fixed costs will be very high. Villagers may either not afford to pay for this or may even refuse to pay (after all they are the vote banks pampered and instigated by political parties. Ultimately power will be subsidised by the government or given free and this would make no economic sense.
More prudent method is to encourage and build with the co-operation of the rural population small power plants using renewable energy sources (suitable to local conditions) to take care of the local energy needs. This could be wind turbine or solar photovoltaic systems or biomass based generation.
Bunker Roy and Aruna Roy have set an example in North India of constructing an energy-self sufficient village. Why not replicate such models rather than drawing up grand plans?
Moreover, most of the energy needs in rural areas is for cooking. Instead of electricity which can not be stored, construction of systems which convert local biomass into direct heat or flame (light) would make sense.
S.Gopal
Bangalore
A national grid is a great idea for making power available to the needy location irrespective of where it is generated. Choice of technology, HVDC or UHV AC etc. are decisions that need to be taken based on the location etc. Seasonal variations the demand / supply are addressed easily with a national grid as has been experienced witht he regional grids in operation for many years. Losses to the tunbe of 4% to 5% on the EHV lines would be seen but this is a small price to pay optimising the availability of power.
The challenge is sufficiency of generation to feed the requirements along with the spend on technology for islanding loads in cse of excess drawal of power. Instances such as the black out in Delhi and surrounding areas in the not too distant past and individual states refusing to feed power to the Northeren Grid are sitiuations that need to be considered.
Distributed generation irrespective of the source of fuel - renewable or not - is a great idea. However, this does not reduce the need for a National Grid. These small generators also must be capable of supplying their excess generation to the grid and earn revenue. Open access of power is a need that has been felt very strongly for quite some time. Legistlations are in place to take this initiative forward. Availability of corriodors for power flow must not be the reason for power not being available.
I would suggest that a stable and strong national grid would pave the way for International Grids.
I think forming a National Grid is a good idea in the short term (may be in a 10 year horizon). This will give quick advanatages like balancing the demand/supply load across the country and help relieve immediate demand/supply problems. Also from a strategic point of view, this will provide a integrated grid base that can be used for tranmitting/distributing power across the country when large nuclear power plants are setup in the future (an anticipated outcome from INDIA's recent nuclear deal). On the flip side, there might be issues with monopolistic pricing, supply etc, if there are plans for privatisation in the future.
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