Why Schneider may want to showcase Puri

For Schneider Electric, an €25-billion French firm, Puri – a tourist city in Odisha known for Lord Jagannath’s temple and Rath Yatra – is set to be the first city in India, in which the company’s advanced smart grid solution will be commissioned.

These are basically technologically advanced solutions that help power utilities lower the transmission and distribution losses by restoring faulty lines fast, improving reliability of the network and helping them predict demand for peak periods.

Schneider is also implementing similar solutions in Thiruvanathapuram, Ernakulam, Kozhikode in Kerala; Patna in Bihar; and Srinagar and Jammu in Jammu and Kashmir.

“The first advanced smart grid project will be commissioned in Puri in a few months,” Prakash Chandraker, Vice-President and Managing Director, Infrastructure Business, Schneider Electric Infrastructure Ltd told Business Line . He did not share the value of the order. After implementation, there will be an audit to gauge in specific terms how the utilities have benefited after the implementation of such a system.

Puri is an interesting case. “Puri’s electricity demand is not like a normal city. When there is a festival – say the Rath Yatra – the peak demand shoots up and is many times of the normal demand. When the festival ends, the demand falls sharply. Now, how do you manage the grid in such a situation? This is where the system will help to predict what kind of load is required, and how do you feed those, also troubleshoot fast through self healing properties built in the system,” Chandraker said.

These are Brownfield projects, where the firm creates a sensor for the utilities, the sensor connect various devices, and creates a network with a central control centre to provide the best service. Earlier, Schneider has implemented distribution management systems for Tata Power, NDPL, and States in the north-east. Now, Schneider wants to pitch the advanced distribution management systems – of the kind it is installing in Puri, Thiruvanathapuram, Srinagar and Patna – for the 100 new cities that the BJP-led NDA Government wants to start building.

But, Schneider is likely to get immediate revenues from Brownfield projects and it may be a while before the company could start getting revenues from these new cities, which are at planning stage.

Further explaining how smart grids help, Chandraker said, “When a sudden fault develops in the transmission and distribution network – say due to a storm – then restoring the network fast is important as utilities have available power but are unable to further distribute and register losses as they cannot bill their customers. Our system helps troubleshoot promptly in such cases.”

He further added that given that the transmission and distribution loss in India is as high as 30 per cent, saving of even 10 per cent of such loss by implementing smart grid solutions will help recover the cost in three-four years.

Competition for Schneider include Alstom, ABB and Siemens. Schneider has 69 factories in Asia Pacific, of which 32 are in India. The company employs 19,000 people in India, with over 1,500 people focussed on research and development.

COMMENT NOW