Role of hydro generation in Indian power grid to challenge the uncommon load patterns during crisis

Abstract

Recently, the Indian Prime Minister Appeals to switch off the Light by people during the corona outbreak for 9 min. It also provides a significant challenge to the Indian power grid. A small malfunction of the power system may lead to a huge disaster that may worsen the daily activity of the 100 million people along with the pandemic. This review work discusses the actions of Indian power grid operation during the challenge when all the domestic Light loads are switched off for 9 min from 21:00 Hours. POSOCO (Power system Operation Corporation) of India handled the difficulty using effective actions and logged the total reduction in all India demands of about 31,089 MW (31 GW) during the event. Before the event, Indian power demand started dropping from 20:45 Hours and reaches 85,799 MW at 21:10 Hours. Subsequently, after the event, the demand begins inclined and settled around 114400 MW at 22:10 Hours. During this complete process, the grid frequency remained between 50.26 Hz and 49.70 Hz. On the other hand, the preliminary mock exercise was conducted by POSOCO before the day of the actual event and reported the expected load reduction of 15085 MW. It was anticipated by summation of SLDCs (State Load Dispatch Centers) which was half value with reported load reduction during the actual event and shows higher variance. This article also interpreted the reports of POSOCO and estimated that the actual Load reduction of this event was about 27452 MW taking place for 15 min. From the discussions, it is observed that the hydro generation schedule have the potential to minimize the havoc of the power system during steep increase and reduction of load demand during unexpected natural or artificial calamities.