Best Automation Project : Reliance Infrastructure : Network Management System

Reliance-Infra, besides having involvement in construction and development of

urban infrastructure, metros, highways, power plants, and specialty real estate,

is also involved in generation, transmission, distribution, and trading of

electricity. With an aim to build a Smart Grid, R-Infra has created a road map

which involves an integrated approach of all the verticals in the electricity

business from generation, transmission and distribution. NMS is one of the

components of Decision Support System which is pivotal for achieving the goal of

Smart Grid. R-Infra's Mumbai electricity distribution business is spread across

an area of 384 kms powering 2.7 million consumers (nearly two out of every three

households in the city) through electrical cable network of approx 3900 KMs

percolating from almost 64 receiving stations (primary distribution point), 6000

substations (secondary distribution point), 50,000 mini pillars, 2 lakh service

points, 75,000 street light poles followed by 2.7 million consumer end meters

with varying voltages. Associated with these huge assets is a problem of

managing the spread of underground cables which run through marshy lands which

can only be effectively managed using fully automated and integrated tools. R-

Infra had been bearing tangible and intangible losses due to higher electricity

network downtime and delayed supply restoration during abnormal fault conditions

due to manual processes in identifying the faulty cable section, inaccessible

remotely located substations during contingent situations like heavy downpour,

flood, riot, earthquake etc. Also there was lack of central monitoring through a

manageable network, sabotage attempt at the sub stations during labour

unrest/strikes, higher wear and tear of the switch gears due to breakdown

maintenance, thus reducing the overall life of the switch gears. This led to

higher replacement cost of the faulty switch gears.

What was deployed



In order to  overcome above issues and to provide world class customer

centric service and to achieve operational and financial excellence, R-Infra has

deployed state of the art technologies like Supervisory Control and Data

Acquisition (SCADA), Outage Management System, Network Management System

comprising of Distribution Management System and Equipment Monitoring System,

Automated Meter Reading, etc. Though utilities across India have also deployed

technologies like SCADA, but they are using this solution to only monitor the

critical parameters of the network at 33 KV. The control and operations of

switch gears are still done manually. In addition, Automated Meter Reading is

done only to remotely capture the data. This means, all the deployed

technologies work in silos. R-Infra on the other hand is the only organization

in India to have successfully integrated all its technologies i.e. SCADA, OMS,

NMS and AMR with enterprise systems like SAP, GIS, Document Management System

and Workflow Management System. This has resulted in developing a successful

Decision Support System to take strategic decisions which has subsequently

helped in achieving business excellence.

The NMS comprised of Distribution Management System and Equipment Monitoring

System. R-Infra had primarily deployed SCADA to remotely monitor and control the

switch gear operations i.e. the automation was restricted till 33KV/11KV

receiving stations. To achieve complete visibility of electrical network,

automation had to be taken to the door step of the consumer -from 33KV/11 KV

receiving station to 11KV/440 V substation which was achieved through the

deployment of NMS. The Distribution Management System was implemented through

ABB at select 20% locations to be communicating on the CDMA network. Equipment

Monitoring System was implemented through Microtechnologies (India) Ltd at the

rest of the 80% locations to be communicating on GSM/GPRS network. These systems

basically capture information from the substation (like temperature, oil level,

smoke level, etc) and send the same through wireless network (CDMA or GSM/GPRS)

to central location for immediate action or future decision.