Alstom Achieves A New Milestone For India's Secure Electrical Grid

As part of its commitment to protect the Indian transmission grid, Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL)[1] has selected Alstom T&D India to deliver its latest generation of grid security technologies for a critical energy management programme, entitled ‘The Unified Real-Time Dynamic State’ project. In what will be the world’s largest grid Wide Area Monitoring System, this game-changing development will enable nation-wide monitoring of power flows across the grid, responding to fluctuations within a fraction of a second. Real-time data ensures that PGCIL can intervene immediately to adjust and match electricity supply to demand.

Valued at INR 3817 million (€4M), the contract covers the supply of a cutting-edge hardware and software solution. For the hardware, Alstom will provide more than 1,300 MiCOM P847 Phasor Measurement Units (PMU)[2], to collect over 18,000 real-time synchronised measurements from 351 substations across the country. Alstom will also equip 34 Control Centres at existing National, Regional and State Load Dispatch sites with e-terraphasorpoint, a software solution which analyses weak spots in the system in real-time. It will detect evolving disturbances, tap into latent electricity capacity across electrical transmission corridors, and provide actionable information to system operators to take timely decisions such as to prevent blackouts. Patrick Plas, Senior Vice President, Power Electronics & Automation of Alstom Grid said, “This is a significant step change in India’s energy management and Alstom is delighted to play its part in allowing a more intelligent grid. The timeliness and quality of the data will provide control room operators with the smartest tool yet to optimise the existing grid assets. This will ensure reliability, and ultimately provide the highest availability of electricity to India’s citizens. This is unmatched in the history of grid management.”

The Indian electricity network, which today is the world’s largest synchronised Grid with a capacity of 232 GW, suffered the world’s largest blackout in 2012. The Indian Grid needs a top-end technological solution to protect the network, as well as get the best operational performance for power flow and reliability.  Alstom’s Wide Area Monitoring System provides an unprecedented time-synchronised snapshot of conditions across the entire country. This gives visibility on power system dynamics and wide-area stress indicators across the country’s vast circuit of some 102,100 kilometres of electrical grid, which ranges from 132 kV to 765 kV AC with 172 substations. This is a major milestone in ensuring the reliability of electricity supply across the country.