Webinar category: Energy

The global unfolding of COVID-19 pandemic has left many individuals and communities filled with concern and brought nations to their knees. The International Copper Association (ICA) stands with its members as they focus on the health, safety and well-being of their employees, their families and the communities in which they operate. We are witnessing the catastrophic impact of pandemic in form of substation / transformer bursting into flames, gas leak, boiler burst and many such incidents completely disrupting industry and life in various parts of India. As we step gradually into unlock versions of the economy, we are eager getting into full throttle while efficiency and productivity firmly in our radar. However, nothing is more important than human lives as we confront such crisis. Maintaining integrity of electrical systems to deliver the all-purpose energy and Electrical safety is on top of agenda for business enterprise owners and decision makers while doing risk management of their business operations. We believe knowledge sharing is one form of co-operation towards shared learning that keep us ready for any such emergencies and ‘Sharing is Caring’.

Electricity Distribution is nothing but keeping the ‘Life On’, and more importantly the ‘Lives safe’. It depends on ‘Reliable and Efficient infrastructure. Distribution Lines, Distribution Transformer (DT), Substation which are few of the vital high capex asset for DISCOMs and Buildings.The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is being felt across the energy system, and the management response will shape our future for decades to come.

Effective asset management is all about achieving the right balance between cost, risk and performance. Focus should be on areas to manage current risks now, as well as providing a roadmap for future asset management through technology improvement. We are seeing that in IT and Communication areas already in human race response to overcome the challenges thrown by Carona.

With some benchmarking data from few DISCOMs it is estimated that the average overall technical losses in DTs with these DISCOMs could be as high as 3%, compared to 0.5% ideal value. High failure rate of 15% plus and downtime is another key concern. These have resulted in poor DISCOM performance during each planning period and increasing technical losses. The ideal strategy is a life cycle management program, that establishes a loading policy for individual transformers, and provides asset management direction to identify:

1. Transformers that can continue to operate as-is (some loaded beyond nameplate),
2. Transformers that can be modified or refurbished;
3. Transformers that should be re-located and
4. Transformers that should be retired.

Approximately 30% of U.S. utilities reported that they have already developed some form of dynamic loading (or over-loading) policy for their transformers, based on thermal limits (top oil temperature, hot spot temperature, thermal gradient etc). In South Africa and Brazil dual rated transformers have proved their mettle in ensuring high degree of safety in crowded place while meeting basic need of supplying electricity 24 x 7 basis.

This makes DT one of the key intervention areas for the Buildings and or DISCOMs through renovation and up-gradation or adoption of new technology to bring down overall Technical losses and Risk Factor involved.

While commercial losses are reflective of management efficiency and people accountability, which have to be enforced, the technical losses and risk mitigation can be controlled through proper planning, technology induction, procurement, quality assurance, installation and O&M practices. Users can do much better by taking steps to prolong asset life without compromising on electrical safety related accidents, thus avoiding the need for managing reputation and costly repair or replacements, as far as practicable, and save on downtime costs as well, particularly during emergencies.

The webinar series “Efficiency and Reliability in Power Utilities” is a joint initiative of ICAI along with pManifold Business Solutions and Spark Group. This webinar, fifth in the series, will bring Indian experts sharing their experiences from the field and answer the following questions:

• How has been their experience in Distribution system, DT and it’s critical role to deliver reliable, efficient and safe supply to consumers?
• How the policy makers and electricity regulator look at its role to keep DISCOM fighting fit!
• What are the key reasons of high failure in India and where we are going wrong! How DISCOMs can meet their key KPIs by ‘doing more with less’
• What new technology and best practices can be adopted by Indian DISCOMs or high-density urban conglomerates or high rise buildings from specifying to upkeeping for getting best of their vital assets in electrical distribution system?
• What planning /decision matrix support is always needed to be in preparedness for quality supply delivery including such time for crisis?
• What are ways for DISCOMs or Building Owners to carry out Risk based asset management for DTs?
• What are new technologies to address safety, prime concern at all cost, in highly populated areas or buildings for today and tomorrow?

Scaling Solar Water Pumps in Asia and Africa

The average yield for maize, a major staple crop in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa is only 2 tons per hectare compared to 8 tons per hectare in America. Many attribute this low agricultural yield to lack of irrigation. Approximately 95% of farmed land in sub- Saharan Africa and 60% of land in South Asia relies solely on unpredictable seasonal rainfall to meet water needs.

Solar Water Pumps (SWPs) have the potential to make modern irrigation accessible and cost-effective for nearly 500 million small-scale farmers worldwide. Solar Water Pump, a clean and modern irrigation technique, has the ability to increase agricultural yields by as much as two to three fold. It expands seasonal growing cycles and mitigates periods of low or irregular rainfall. Interviews in India showed an increase in a farmer’s profitability of up to 50% with the use of a SWP.

Assessing its immense potential for productive use and agricultural productivity, leading global organisations have included SWPs in their near term technologies of focus. Under the ambitious PM-Kusum scheme, Indian government plans to install 2.75 million SWPs in the country by 2022. Under the KOSAP Programme, World Bank is investing around USD 150 millions to enable under serves counties in Kenya, a country in Eastern Africa, to access modern energy services through off-grid solar including SWPs. Even with the product’s potential and government and global organisations’ backing, uptake of SWPs have still not reached its optimum levels. Number of challenges like behavioural change w.r.t. irrigating farmlands, pump’s high upfront costs, lack of awareness about the product, etc. needs to be addressed to increase uptake of SWP. This webinar aims to bring together industry experts and initiate discussion around these challenges, the methods and approach to combat them and thus open new avenues to a brighter future for SWPs.

The webinar shall focus on the following topics:

• Market potential: Trend of SWP’s market over the years, current market scenario in Asia and Africa and total serviceable addressable market. Comparison of BAU market scenario for the coming decade as against with optimistic SWP adoption
• Challenges: Most critical challenges for uptake of SWPs especially in Africa and Asia
• Counter measures: Ways to combat the obstacles and to establish optimum industry approach. Points covered in counter measures shall deal with:
  • Promoting Pump irrigation
  • Most efficient Business models
  • Most efficient Financing programmers
  • Required Technological advancements
  • Optimum Government policies
  • Increasing Product awareness
  • Scope of Standardization

Electricity Distribution – backbone to drive our fight during any emergency

The global spread of COVID-19 has left many individuals and communities filled with concern. The International Copper Association (ICA) stands with its members as they focus on the health, safety and well-being of their employees, their families and the communities in which they operate. We just saw the impact of super cyclone ‘Amphan’ completely disrupting life in eastern part of India. Nothing is more important than human lives as we confront such crisis. We believe knowledge sharing is one form of co-operation and ‘Sharing is Caring’.

Power Distribution is nothing but keeping the ‘Life On’, and more importantly the ‘Lives safe’. It depends on ‘Reliable and Efficient infrastructure. Distribution Lines, Distribution Transformer (DT), Substation are few of the vital high capex asset for DISCOMs. With some benchmarking data from few DISCOMs, it is observed that the technical losses in old legacy DTs and systems have deviated significantly from the specification values. It is estimated that the average overall technical losses in DTs with these DISCOMs could be as high as 3%, compared to 0.5% ideal value. This makes DT one of the key intervention areas for the DISCOMs to bring down their overall Technical losses. Besides line losses are impacted by various operational constraints or gaps in planning and investment from time to time.

High failure rate and downtime is result of weak asset management practices including low quality of repairs, and maintenance of DTs and other systems. These have resulted in lack-lustre DISCOM performance during each planning period andincreasing technical losses. More often, ATC loss is the only performance metric tracked by DISCOMs, but attention is also needed into the inherent characteristics of the DTs and their impact in efficient power distribution system, including technical losses. While commercial losses are reflective of management efficiency and people accountability, which have to be enforced, the technical losses can be controlled through proper planning, procurement, quality assurance, installation and O&M practices. DISCOMs can do much better by taking steps to prolong asset life, thus avoiding the need for costly repair or replacements, as far as practicable, and save on downtime costs as well, particularly during emergencies.

Poor financial state of DISCOMs is a cause of great concern for the whole power sector.There are many reform programs initiated by the Government of India to modernize and improve the distribution network, utility processes and overall financial sustenance of DISCOMs, including Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS), DeenDayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) and others. These programs have yielded some positive results in ATC loss reduction and system improvement, but the progress has been slow. Many DISCOMs have focused their overall loss reduction initiatives only around making DTs as profit centres, but again the focus is usually on factors external to the DTs, a trend which needs to be relooked.

The webinar series “Efficiency and Reliability in Power Utilities” is a joint initiative of ICAI along with pManifold Business Solutions and Spark Group. This webinar, first in the series, will bring Indian experts sharing their experiences from the field and answer the following questions:

• How has been their experience in Distribution system, DT and it’s critical role to deliver reliable, efficient and safe supply to consumers?
• What are the key reasons of high DT failure in India and where we are going wrong! How DISCOMs can meet their key KPIs by ‘doing more with less’
• What best practices can be adopted by Indian DISCOMs from specifying to upkeeping for getting best of their vital assets in distribution system?
• What planning /decision matrix support is always needed to be in preparedness for quality supply delivery including such time for crisis?
• What are ways for DISCOMs to carry out Risk based asset management for DTs?

Mainstreaming Solar DC Applications

Direct Current (DC) power is the future of our sustainable energy future and global uptake of DC powered devices are on the rise. For instance, in residential buildings in United States of America, DC consumption currently makes up about 32 percent of total energy loads, and this could climb as high as 74 percent in homes that use electric vehicles and HVAC equipment with DC motors. In China and Europe, new cities and villages are being envisioned that will be entirely DC powered as the technology and applications offer the promise of enhanced energy efficiency, improved power quality and reliability, and inherent alignment with renewable and clean energy development. Although technology is propelling towards a DC-powered future, legacy AC infrastructure is anchoring to the past, hindering our ability to realize the full potential of energy efficient DC appliances and distributed energy. But as the electric power sector modernizes, two substantial changes signal a paradigm shift in advancing DC Applications. First, declining costs and increasing options in distributed generation (DG) offers an opportunity for micro-grids and low-voltage transmission close to loads. Second, improvements in battery technologies are driving down costs for localized energy storage. Batteries, which deliver DC power, offer many advantages, not only to the electric system for supply side management but also for demand side management. Moreover, governments around the world are promoting Solar DC Appliances like Fans, SWPs, etc. under universal electrification programs in rural areas, which still remain in acute darkness, making Solar DC bulbs, tube-lights, TVs, etc. accessible to them. The biggest opportunity comes from the fact that the leading form of distributed generation, solar photovoltaic, creates electricity in DC, thus cutting all conversion losses. Combining DC Storage with Solar Distributed Generation, Solar DC-powered micro-grids become a very attractive option for their system efficiency, reliability, resiliency, and ancillary benefits. Overall, looking at the brighter side of DC it is believed that it’s time to mainstream solar DC applications and understand what efforts will be required by the industry in doing so.

This webinar will focus on:

• Technology Landscape: Technology landscape and advances made globally in Solar DC Applications
• Innovations and Best Practices: Innovations big players/small players/start-ups are building in further scaling and advancing these solutions
• Customer Behavior: Changes in customer behavior are envisioned for higher adoption of Solar DC Systems and barriers faced by the end-user customer

Webinar: Building a Financial Model for Grid Scale/Rooftop Solar Project

Watch the video to access the webinar on Building a Financial Model for Grid Scale/Rooftop Solar Project

Low Voltage DC Fans: Bringing scale to solving energy efficiency and access problems in India

Energy efficiency (EE) and energy access (EA) interventions in India have often had disjointed goals and taken separate paths towards achieving those goals. The Government and DISCOMs have focused mainly on expanding and strengthening the grid for meeting universal EA objectives. This approach has been faced with severe challenges for providing round the clock power to rural consumers because of the high cost of supply and revenue losses incurred by DISCOMs. Decentralized renewable energy (DRE) technologies and energy storage have for long proved as useful complementary solutions for enabling quality energy access among rural consumers. However, energy efficient (EE) operation of rural end-use loads and power supply systems is often overlooked in EA interventions involving grid extension.

DRE players operating micro / mini-grids have for long been adopting energy efficient end-use technologies in their efforts to minimize the overall cost of energy service. This essential feature of providing efficient energy access to rural consumers is missing in the Government’s efforts (e.g. Saubhagya scheme).

Efficient end-use consumption is at the heart of any DSM program, and Low Voltage DC (LVDC) appliances have flared quite well. There is high proliferation of LVDC appliances like LED bulbs and lights, BLDC fans, and BLDC motors in Air Conditioning, washing machine and other applications, with advantage of improved electronic controls and resulting EE, but most of them are powered by AC supply. This split of LVDC appliances market in India 1) running on AC supply only 2) running on DC supply only and 3) can run on AC or DC, has led to economies of scale not building up on supply side, keeping LVDC EE appliances price still premium and lower adoption.

This Webinar shall focus on one such appliance “BLDC Fan” that can give greater than 60% energy savings overall, but current volumes of National use has kept its pricing 65% higher than base models. Both urban and rural use and economics shall be looked into, together with new potential business models. Some top questions that shall be looked into are:

• How is demand for EE fans in India – rural and urban?
• How is its supply market evolving? What technology models and options?
• If and how, a new class of BLDC fan with an external AC-to-DC adaptor can be made to run on AC or DC supply, can disrupt the market and help pull EE premium down?
• What further innovations on product/ technology side and business models can lead to UJALA like programmatic replacement of existing fans with higher EE LVDC fans?
• If and how learning from BLDC fan case study can be extended to other motorised home appliances like Air condition, Washing machine and others?

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