Secretary, Ministry of Power reviews the Islanding Schemes for Power Sector for maintaining the essential load in the event of major outage

Secretary, Ministry of Power reviewed all the existing and planned Islanding Schemes in Indian Power System yesterday here with Central Electricity Authority (CEA), all five Regional Power Committees (RPCs), PGCIL and POSOCO.

Resilience of the electricity grid is very important particularly in restoration of supply in the event of the major power outage. Islanding Scheme is a defense mechanism for the power system in which a part of the system is islanded from a disturbed grid so that this subpart could survive in isolation from rest of grid and continuity of supply to the essential load in this area is maintained. Accordingly, CEA was advised to ensure the functional aspect of the existing Islanding schemes and also design Islanding schemes for major cities. In such electrical Islanded system, the essential loads should be identified and covered so that these load continue to be served even during any major outage.

As informed by CEA, 17 numbers of new Islanding schemes have been planned for the major cities besides already 26 existing/under implementation scheme.

CEA further informed that they have advised all the SLDCs to set up a separate display of Islanding Scheme on SCADA for real time monitoring of participating generators and critical load and the same display would also be available at respective RLDCs/SLDCs/Sub SLDCs. This will help in real time monitoring of load generation balance of such electrical Islands which is the essence of successful Islanding.

In this direction, Delhi SLDC has taken lead and has prepared SCADA display page for generators and frequency-wise load relief detail. A display page on SCADA for real time monitoring of the schemes has been created by SLDC, Delhi and shown below:-

This will be replicated for all the Islanding schemes in the country. These islanding schemes would ensure maintenance of essential services and also faster restoration of supply to the electricity consumers in the event of any outage.