Integrating wind and solar energy in India for a Smart Grid platform
47791
1. TWO SUCCESSIVE POWER BLACK-
OUTS IN INDIA IMPACT 0NE-HALF
OF INDIA’S 1.2 BILLION PEOPLE
JULY 30-31 and following, 2012
Walter Hays, Global Alliance for
Disaster Reduction, University of
North Carolina, USA
3. BLACKOUTS ON TWO
SUCCESSIVE DAYS CREATE
CHAOS IN INDIA
OVER 600 MILLION PEOPLE AND ALL
COMMUNITY POWER-DEPENDENT
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
4. DIMENSIONS OF THE
BLACKOUTS
• Power grids in 19 of India’s
28 States stretching from
Assam, near China, to the
Himalayas and the
northwestern deserts of
Rajasthan, shut down
5. What is dramatic about these
blackouts is that they have
impacted the entire country.
6. BLACKOUT NO SURPRISE
FOR INDIA’S BUSINESSES
• India's well known, unreliable
power system had already
forced businesses to create a
“workaround electricity
system” of noisy, dirty and
expensive diesel generators.
7. INDIA’S BUSINESSES LOSE
MONEY, BUT ABLE TO COPE
• Although very costly for a
businesses’ bottom line, most
large businesses were
prepared and able to cope with
what may be the “world’s
worst blackout.”
8. On Monday (July 30th), India
was forced to buy power
from tiny Bhutan
9. HOW BAD WAS IT?
• The worst blackout in India’s
history that spread to more than
half the country Tuesday,
reinforced concerns that the
nation’s inefficient power sector
could undermine its long-term
economic ambitions to become a
SUPERPOWER.
10. INTERNATIONAL
EMBARASSMENT
The scale of the blackouts caused
India acute embarrassment on the
international stage.
11. CAUTION:
DON’T THINK THAT INDIA IS THE
ONLY COUNTRY THAT IS VULNERABLE
TO POWER OUTAGES
12. POWER STABILITY: HARDER
TO ACHIEVE
• India is NOT uniquely vulnerable to
large-scale grid failures.
• The growing complexity and
reliance on the electric grid is
making power stability harder to
achieve in both developed and
fast-growing countries.
14. THE CAUSES:
1) India’s antiquated power
systems, 2) An increase in peak
demand caused not by the heat, but
by an unexpected need to pump
water from wells for agricultural
uses due to much less rain during
the monsoon season, …
15. THE CAUSES (continued):
3) Low current rainfall has also
restricted the amount of
hydroelectric power delivered by
dams, normally a significant
percentage of India’s power
16. Monday’s failure was also
blamed on individual states
drawing too much power
from the grid, in defiance of
regulations.
17. Central government was
supposed to warn states if
they were drawing
excessive power from the
system, but NO warnings
were issued on Monday or
Tuesday.
22. DIMENSIONS OF THE
IMPACTS
• All power-dependent
community functions (e.g.,
government, business
enterprise, hospitals,
schools, …) in 19 States,
were shut down.
23. DIMENSIONS OF THE
IMPACTS
• Some major city hospitals
and office buildings had to
fire up diesel generators.
25. DIMENSIONS OF THE
IMPACTS
• Two hundred miners were
stranded in three deep coal
shafts in the state of West
Bengal when their electric
elevators stopped working.
26. DIMENSIONS OF THE
IMPACTS
• Wheat-belts:Punjab and
Uttar Pradesh in the Ganges
Plains, needing electricity to
pump water from wells, were
hit hard
27. POWER RESTORED, FOR
NOW
3:00 PM TUESDAY, JULY 31 FOR
EMERGENCY SERVICES
“NORMAL” ON WEDNESDAY,
AUGUST 1, 2012
29. A TYPICAL UNANSWERED
QUESTION
Were the power outages
“accidents” that were just
waiting to happen?
30. A TYPICAL UNANSWERED
QUESTION
Are the causes of India’s power
outages more political than from
lack of technology or inadequate
engineering?
31. A TYPICAL UNANSWERED
QUESTION
Big cities like New Delhi have
backup power, but what might
happen during surgery in a
small town?.
32. A TYPICAL UNANSWERED
QUESTION
How many will die because of
this historic blackout...
10? ---100? --- 1,000?
33. INDIA’S LONG TERM NEED
FOR POWER
At present, about 300 million people in
India have no access to power, and 300
million more have only sporadic access.
34. THE LONG TERM
QUESTION
Grappling with the slowest
economic growth in nine years,
can India pump $1 trillion into
infrastructure and power over
the next five years, as planned?
35. TIME FOR A SHIFT IN
TECHNOLOGY
• India's disaster illustrates the
perils of the current practice of
relying on manual control of
the power grid.
36. THE GRID OPERATOR
• The primary function of grid
operator is to anticipate load
and to maintain a steady
balance between power
supply and demand.
37. THE GRID SIGNAL
• The grid signal operates at a
set frequency—60 hertz in the
U.S. and 50 hertz in India —and
when supply and demand fall
out of sync, the frequency will
either dip or rise.
38. KEEPING THE GRID SIGNAL
STEADY
• TIn the U.S., grid operators
have "hot" generators on
standby to ramp up power in
order to keep a close-to-steady
frequency, which works if the
generators are not maxed out.
39. COSTLY AND
IMPRACTICAL IN INDIA
• In a country like India, it's
both costly and impractical
to keep 10 percent of the
generation capacity on
contingency when you may
only use it once in a lifetime.
40. THE TECHNOLOGY TO KEEP THE
SIGNAL STEADY EXISTS NOW
• A shift in technology from manual
control of the grid (which is common in
India and many places around the
world) to more advanced control
technology can help grids recover
more effectively from outages when
they occur.
Editor's Notes
More lectures at Disasters Supercourse - http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/collections/collection52.htm
