This story is from October 15, 2020

Power play: Mega inverter in Delhi shows the future in case of grid failure

A grid failure recently led to massive power outages in Mumbai and its neighbouring areas, almost bringing the country’s financial capital to a halt, including its trains. Precautions are being taken in the capital avoid such a situation, at least for essential services like hospitals, the Delhi Metro, Delhi Jal Board etc.
Power play: Mega inverter in Delhi shows the future in case of grid failure
TATA Power-DDL, has set up a South Asia’s largest grid scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in north Delhi’s Rohini
NEW DELHI: A grid failure recently led to massive power outages in Mumbai and its neighbouring areas, almost bringing the country’s financial capital to a halt, including its trains. Precautions are being taken in the capital avoid such a situation, at least for essential services like hospitals, the Delhi Metro, Delhi Jal Board etc.
TATA Power-DDL, has set up a South Asia’s largest grid scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in north Delhi’s Rohini in collaboration with AES Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation.
In simpler terms, the 10 MW battery storage set up in Rohini is like inverters in our houses, only a massive one interconnected on a network of 200 MW capacity, which can feed around 2,500 ‘preferred customers’.
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The preferred customers, TATA Power-DDL spokesperson said, are those providing essential services like hospitals, Delhi Jal Board, Delhi Metro, government offices, schools etc., where the company proposes to use emergency power during any breakdown or situations like grid failure.
Ganesh Srinivasan, CEO, Tata Power-DDL said that this ‘inverter’ would also help in managing peak power demand load during summer and help balance the load curve of power distribution utilities. “The rate of power changes during the day during peak and non-peak hours. You can’t store electricity but with battery prices coming down rapidly, this ability to store energy can help as you can charge when prices are low and discharge when the prices are higher,” Srinivasan told TOI.

He said that distribution companies can predict the demand, based on the weather or other factors and schedule power generation accordingly. However, there could be times when the prediction can go wrong. Thanks to BESS, the discom can store additional power if the demand doesn’t rise or meet additional demand if needed.
In the BESS, Li-ion (Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt oxide) batteries are used with support of Advancion technology to operate the plant seamlessly. The 10 MWh system is divided into four cores of 2.5 MWh capacity and each core can be operated individually and collectively.
After Rohini, a similar facility is coming up in north Delhi’s Rani Bagh and there are plans to have similar but smaller facilities in every neighbourhood in the future.
Srinivasan said that instead of building transformers and electric equipment, similar batteries can be used to meet peak hour demand for a few hours during when the demand is high. He said that instead of creating humongous infrastructure required to meet peak demand for some hours, particularly in summers, one can think of investing in batteries, where capital expenditure is lower.
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