As the fastest growing state in India for the past decade, with the bustling city of Bangalore at its heart, Karnataka’s appetite for electricity is voracious.
Ensuring reliable supplies of quality electricity reach customers in the face of spiraling demand is a major challenge, for even the best run utilities.
Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) has chosen ABB energy monitoring and control system to strengthen its entire transmission and distribution network, as well as its constituent distribution utilities.
The solution is an integrated selection of ABB Network Manager SCADA/ EMS/DMS software and systems Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition/Energy Management System/Distribution Management System) that together monitor and report from every important part of the network across the entire state.
This provides a real time picture of Karnataka’s entire transmission and distribution network from a single screen in a single control room in real time, incorporating essential modern energy and distribution management applications.
To make this work, ABB has set up sixteen control centres around the network, nearly 900 remote terminal units (RTUs) and wired about one million input / output connections into KPTCL’s transmission and distribution grid. These combined systems monitor and control approximately 900 main transmission and distribution substations scattered across the state, including those in Bangalore.
Further, the project will now cater to additional 390 RTUs as part of an extension order, to bring more network visibility to the control room operators. The linking up of these stations also includes integration of Network Manager with Substation Automation System from ABB and other manufacturers. These systems are already integrated as part of the existing project. The entire data acquisition is done over VSAT from the RTUs to the main control centres on IEC 104 protocol, a unique communication media deployed in the country by an electricity utility.
From the main control centres, the data is transferred to the six Area Load Dispatch Centres (ALDCs) and six Distribution Control Centres (DCCs) on ICCP (Inter Control Centre Protocol) communication protocol.
This is the first system of its type and scope to be installed anywhere in the world, and helps KPTCL monitor, control and deliver electricity to roughly 14.6 million customers, across a coverage area of 192,000 sq. km.
The delivered system also has the energy billing, energy audit, and availability based tariff (EB, EA and ABT) applications which is integrated with SCADA to ensure integrated solution of technical and revenue information which not only improves network performance and operational excellence, but also shows where and how the network is earning revenue.