The international community of electrotechnical experts, shared India’s concerns on power quality during an open session of 77th International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) General Meeting 2013 on ‘Challenges to Power Quality’ which was hosted by Bureau of Indian Standards, at Vigyan Bhavan. In his opening remarks, IEC President Klaus Wucherer emphasised the role of power quality in the coming years in IEC’s standardisation work.
In his keynote address, RN Nayak, CMD (Power Grid Corporation of India) told that Indian Power Sector is expected to reach gigantic capacity of 580GW by 2030, with renewable energy sector contributing about 100GW in the next 10 years. As the conventional sources of energy are bound to shrink, the alternative sources of energy will become predominant, and managing power quality of the overall energy spectrum would be a major challenge. In a large country like India, the distance between generating stations and load centers being very large, bulk transfer of energy would require long transmission lines including multi-terminal HVDC lines.
Five eminent speakers, namely Richard Schomberg from Germany, Dr Shu from China, Paul Johnson from South Africa, Dr Bhim Singh Professor of Electrical Engineering at IIT Delhi and Dr Sivaji Chakravorthy Professor of Electrical Engineering, Jadavpur University highlighted the challenges to power quality especially in the developing countries. It was informed by Robert Schomberg, who is also the chairman of IEC committee dealing with power quality that appropriate statistical indices for monitoring power quality are being standardised which will provide a framework for guidance and facilitating regulation by various countries.
Summing up the session, RN Nayak said that from about 10 years from now, every house would be a power producer as well as consumer, as they would have a generator — such as solar panel, and they would also have a storage device for use in devices like electric vehicle. Each house would also contain several intelligent devices, which would require power to operate.
In view of the above and with the expected spurt in renewable energy sources, there would be a greater need to ensure organised technological support for dealing with complexities in the power system for maintaining the desired level of power quality. He concluded by stating that developing standards on power quality would go a long way in meeting the expectations of all stakeholders.