New technology ensures system reliability O P Gupta, General Manager, BEST, tells Aarti Katira how their systems ensure regular electricity to the island city of Mumbai

New technology ensures system reliability

O P Gupta, General Manager, BEST, tells Aarti Katira how their systems ensure regular electricity to the island city of Mumbai

BEST has an excellent track record of electricity supply. There are three aspects of the process; one is of course the demand of power supply. We have to plan for the demand so that you meet the requirement in the worst scenario and according the planning aspect of the demand management is based on factual scenario. This takes into account the changing lifestyle of Mumbai city from time to time, the weather pattern and the product mix in terms of consumers. This helps us make accurate assessment of demand itself so that necessary power can be procured. BEST has tried always to enter in long term power procurements so as to minimise the fluctuations in terms of requirements and actual supply available. About 90% of the BEST power requirement are long term power, so we have managed our demand in a way and projected in a way that we have been able to put in almost 85-90% long term power contract in place. The next step is to distribute that power efficiently and for that we have created a system which is based on most modern techniques in the country. BEST is considered as a pioneer in most of the power distribution system across the country, whether it is metering, cabling, transformers or switch gear. BEST has been at the forefront in adopting new technology, so system reliability has been high. If there are breakdowns then there have to be alternate systems to put things back in place. There are two ways for this-one, if your system is designed in the way that it has system redundancy is available so if one sector is at fault, you can isolate it and reconnect the supply to the area from your redundancy part, which is called "the call ring fencing system". Each distribution transformer set has at least two lines of supply, so if one supply line fails to a particular distribution site so you always have an alternate. Among the key challenges, one is of course the power procurement part, hence we are already looking at the growing demand, trying to project the demand requirements over next few years and to enter long term power procurement. We have also started buying power from power exchanges as part of our power management system. Procurement of the power should hopefully not be the concern as the country is moving to generating lots of power. When it comes to distributing power efficiently to the customers, the major challenge is to find places to set up the receiving sub-station, distribution sub-station and to lay down the cables for that. Developing these systems in a set city like Mumbai can be challenging. Therefore, we have modified our policy on receiving and distribution sub-station requirements looking at the specific areas. One has to also look at the development plans of the municipal corporation and try to project power demand, to meet them. Accordingly one must incorporate the power requirements in the city development. If we are able to match this and then probably the challenge can be met in a much more organised way.