PANAJI
With Goa facing 120-150 megawatt of power shortfall during the peak hours, the State government is now considering having Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), the State-of-the-art system that guarantees continuous electricity supply to it consumers, even in the event of technical faults or grid failures.
For this, the Electricity department has decided to study India’s first BESS system, implemented in New Delhi by their power distribution company BSES.
During the recently held State Advisory Committee (SAC) meeting of the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC), the electricity department was asked to explore the possibility of implementing BESS system in order to meet the peak requirements in the State.
The SAC also directed the State to explore options like Demand Side Management (DSM) -- a strategy to reduce energy demand by encouraging consumers to change their electricity usage habits especially industrial and commercial units -- to reduce the peak demand.
“One of the key points of discussion was focused on 120-150 mw of shortfall in peak power faced by the State of Goa that leads to price excursions up to Rs 20 per unit. This forces the department to go to demand restrictions on industrial, hotel and commercial consumers who are then forced to run the diesel generator sets to meet their peak power requirement. This high price excursion will make an energy storage system to meet peak demand financially viable,” states the minutes of the meeting.
“To design the energy storage system, the necessary task would be the estimation of peak power shortage, cost benefit analyses for the procurement of power from BESS,” it said pointing out that 10 mw size BESS system has already been installed in Delhi.
A senior official explained that during peak hours, when the power load is maximum, the BESS system will help avoid withdrawals from the grid, thereby avoiding overloading.
BESS are advanced systems that use rechargeable batteries to store energy generated from different sources, generally renewable sources like sun and wind, and release it to the grid when needed. They use algorithms and software to coordinate with the electricity grid and decide whether to store or release energy.
During the meeting, SAC member Alok Kumar said that the demand side of the electric power system should be balanced in a way to meet the peak demand requirements and that there are already many solutions that are being undertaken at the generation side. “One way is to change the demand usage pattern of the consumers,” he said.
The SAC proposed introduction of DSM or Demand Response (DR) that refers to balancing the demand on power grids by encouraging consumers to shift electricity demand to times when other demand is lower.
