Power Systems Stability

What do you understand by Interconnection of Power Systems?

Describe its advantages & disadvantages.
Name the various power grids in India.

A worldwide trend in the development of power systems is to build

interconnections with the goal to achieve economical benefits. Such large
interconnected systems can cover many countries or even wide continental
areas. Interconnections of power systems may offer significant technical,
economical and environmental advantages, such as pooling of large power
generation stations, sharing of spinning reserve and use of most economic
energy resources taking into account also ecological constraints: nuclear power
stations at special locations, hydro energy from remote areas, solar energy from
desert areas and connection of large off-shore wind farms.

The liberalization in the power industry also supports more interconnections to

enable the exchange of power among the regions or countries and to transport
cheaper energy over long distances to the load centers. Examples for such
interconnections are systems in Russia, North America, Europe and Asia.
However, there are technical and economical limitations in the interconnections
if the energy has to be transmitted over extremely long distances. In future, the
situation can, however, change if ecological and political terms change or the
present cost conditions alternate.

The interconnections are mostly realized by synchronous links where such

solutions are technically feasible and economically justified. On the other hand
HVDC links often offer technically better and more economical solutions. A large
number of examples worldwide shows, that HVDC is a quite suitable solution.
However, in many situations, hybrid solutions for interconnection are more
advantageous: a synchronous high voltage AC link, supported by an additional
HVDC link. In cases where the synchronous interconnection is technically at the
limit, HVDC can support the operation of the interconnected systems and thus
makes the synchronous AC link more reliable.

In case of an isolated plant, a considerable amount of the reserve capacity would

be required to ensure the continuity of the supply, to provide an uninterrupted
power supply. This would naturally increase the capital cost of the power station
resulting in increase in the fixed cost owing to interest and depreciation.

In some parts of the country there are large resources of generating power but
their requirement is low whereas in other parts power requirement is large as
compared to available resources of power.

These above difficulties can be overcome by interconnecting power stations.

Interconnection of power stations increases the reliability of the supply, reduces
the reserve capacity required, improves the load factor, diversity factor and
efficiency, makes use of more efficient plants as base load plants and less
efficient plants as peak load plants possible and reduces the capital cost per kW
and overall cost per unit generated.

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However, the problems of load and frequency control are more difficult in large
interconnected systems with many power stations scattered over a wide area in
comparison with a system having one or two generating stations.

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Power Grids in INDIA:

The objective of Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd is to create a strong and
vibrant National Grid in the country to ensure the optimum utilization of
generating resources, conservation of an eco-sensitive right of way and the
flexibility to accommodate the uncertainty of generation plans.With the
modernization of RLDCs and implementation of various inter-regional links, inter-
regional power exchange has grown manifold. During FY 2007-08, about 43,000
MUs of inter-regional energy transfer was facilitated--an increase of about 13%
compared to the previous year (about 38,000 MU). Growth of inter-regional
power exchange has helped in meeting more demand in energy deficit regions
besides achieving overall economy. Inter-regional power transfer capacity of the
National Grid has been enhanced to about 17,000 MW in FY 2007-08.
Four major power regions of the country namely, North-Eastern, Eastern,
Western and Northern are now operating as one synchronous grid (same
frequency). Southern Regional grid is connected to this synchronous grid through
HVDC links. A transmission plan has also been evolved for strengthening the
regional grids and to support the generation capacity addition program of about
78,000 MW during XI Plan. In line with the perspective plan, various inter-
regional transmission schemes have been undertaken for implementation by
POWERGRID. Several milestones have been achieved by The Power Grid
Corporation of India Ltd as a part of the development of the National Grid such
as the implementation of Asia’s longest Talcher-Kolar HVDC Bipole link including
its upgradation, Sasaram HVDC back-to-back link, 400 kV D/C Synchronous
interconnection between Eastern and Western Region including series
compensation, Augmentation of Gazuwaka HVDC, Muzaffarpur-Gorakhpur400 kV
D/c line under Tala Transmission System, Agra-Gwalior 765 kV S/C line (operating
at 400 kV), Patna-Balia 400 kV D/c line, Biharshariff-Balia 400 kV D/c line, etc.
Establishment of the ultimate National Grid is on fast track and a number of
projects are under implementation/ planned which would enhance Inter-regional
power transfer capacity of the National Grid to more than 37,000 MW by year
2012.
Thus there are five power grids in India -
 Eastern Grid
 Western Grid
 Southern Grid
 Northern Grid
 North-Eastern Grid

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References:
[1] A Course in Electrical Power by J. B. Gupta

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[2] Solutions for large Power System Interconnections by W. Breuer, D. Povh, D.

Retzmann, E. Teltsch (Siemens AG, Germany) & X. Lei (XJ Group,
China)
[3] http://www.powergridindia.com

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