Inside a Gas Insulated Sub-station in India (GIS)
A tower and bus bays
KETRACO's Heads of Technical and HR during a recent visit in India are shown inside a GIS
The Gas Insulated Sub-station outer building- A gas insulated substation is an electrical substation in which the major structures are contained in a sealed environment with sulfur hexafluoride gas as the insulating medium. Gas insulated substations originated in Japan where the there a major need to develop technology that would allow substations to be made as compact as possible.
India being a vast country, approximately six times the size of our country Kenya, it has an area of 3,200,000sq km and population of approximately 1.3 billion people hence a very high demand for electrical energy.
It’s ranked fifth in the world in terms of the installed capacity after USA, CHINA, JAPAN and RUSSIA. Installed capacity of electrical energy can be defined as the total amount of generation of the energy at the national level, that is hydro-power, thermal energy, solar energy, nuclear energy and tidal energy all summed together.
The installed capacity at the moment stands at 180,000 MW(Megawatts) with an ambitious plan of raising this to 200,000 MW by the year 2012, compared to Kenya's 1,300 MW. Power Grid India is a state run corporation with a human capital of approximately 9,0000 employees that is mandated to ensure the transmission of this power within the vast country and to interconnect with neighboring countries including Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
As a bold step towards achieving this, Power Grid has in the last 34 years of its existence been able to construct and maintain 80,000 km of high voltage transmission lines. This compared to Kenya is a number of light years ahead as our total circuit kilometers for high voltage transmission is barely 4000km.
India being a vast country is divided into five power zones namely, Northern Region (NR),Western Region(WR),Southern Region(SR),Eastern Region(ER) and the North Eastern Region(N.E R).This is comparable with Kenya's coastal region, Mt Kenya region, Western region and the Rift valley region. Most of the hydro power generation is in the N.E.R with the majority of the load centers being located in the Northern and Western regions i.e., New Delhi, Gujarat and Punjab to name just but a few. Most of India electricity generation is thermal generation and this is due to the availability of coal deposits within the country.
With the high population, the demand for electrical energy has skyrocketed in the last 10 years for it is during this period that India has experienced a very fast economic growth. This has in turn resulted to very fast development in the energy sector and Power Grid has responded by adopting the latest technology in energy transmission which among them include Utra High AC and Ultra High DC transmission voltages.
At the moment the transmission voltages in India include:765kv HVAC,400kv HVAC and 500kv HVDC. Research work is at an advanced stage for the introduction of 1200kv HVAC and 800kv HVDC. With the implementation of the 1200kv HVAC which is set for mid-next year (2012),this will be the highest transmission voltage in the world, even higher than China's 1100kv HVAC.
Voltage levels of 220kv and 132 kv are the sub transmission voltages while 66kv is a distribution voltage. This can be compared to our country Kenya where the 132kv and 220kv are the main transmission voltages.
In a nutshell, the comparison between Kenya's and India's power transmission sector is an eye opener for us given that the Vision 2030 cannot be achieved without proper planning and growth in the energy sector. Its thus a calling for all of us to put our best foot forward to face the challenge ahead of us.
"YES WE CAN"
No comments:
Post a Comment