ABB India,IIT Madras to develop multi village microgrid models

To strengthen UDAY scheme, ABB India and IIT Madras will collaborate to develop a power management system to optimise the operation of multiple microgrids, with and without grid connection, while managing electricity supply to villages.

This system will also enable the integration of individual solar photovoltaic (PV) rooftops to a village microgrid, ABB India said in a filing to BSE.

The government is looking at a generation capacity of 40 GW in the next five years through grid connected rooftop solar PV and small scale solar PV plants.

Such clusters have the capability of generating and using renewable energy locally from one kilowatt to a few hundred kilowatts. It is imperative to network such locally distributed nano or microgrids for optimal usage of renewable power across users, keeping in mind the dynamic demand/supply situation.
 

Such interconnection and interleaving of microgrids with the existing distribution system and infrastructure

Will

provide economic benefits for the people, in terms of reduced outages and lower cost of power.

"The UDAY (Ujwal discom assurance yojana) scheme is the need of the hour and will foster greater corporate-academia partnerships which can contribute to solving the country's issues and I am pleased that IIT Madras and ABB have embarked on this journey," ABB India CEO and Managing Director Sanjeev Sharma said in a statement.

"We are looking forward to adding another facet to our enriching association with IIT Madras. In a country as huge and diverse as India, it is important to design models of integration with power management and load balancing for proven microgrids technology with the existing grid infrastructure," he added.

This, along with the modular nature of this technology, will enable access to reliable, sustainable and cost efficient power to even the most disadvantaged, remote areas of the country, he said.

"While India has set an ambitious target for solar energy generation, IIT Madras has been at the forefront in developing decentralised energy-efficient solar PV microgrid solutions tailored to meet India's urban, rural and off-grid power requirements," Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras said.