APEPDCL to adopt Demand Side Management to save money

Visakhapatnam: After Andhra Pradesh Eastern Power Distribution Company Ltd (APEPDCL) has introduced eco-friendly cars for their management purpose, now it is planning to energise its Demand-Side Management (DSM) adopting smart grid and Internet of Things (IoT).

The new programme will helps the discom to save crores of money. The DSM programme covers major segments, including agricultural pump-sets, residential/commercial ACs and industrial units. Initially, the project in Andhra Pradesh Solar Power Corporation Limited (APSPCL) is only monitoring the grid supplying powers to agricultural sector.

According to the sources, the EPDCL of the State has already received a proposal for this DSM project from Auto Grid which is implementing a same IoT based project in Tirupati under southern power discom.

In which, the IoT system provides the capability to predict, optimise and control tens of thousands of distributed energy resources, millions of participants, using trillions of data-points, in real time.

One of the senior officer in APEDCL opined that through DSM project, the savings will be achieved via peak shaving for capex avoidance, time of use, implementation to leverage cheaper power at off-peak hours, soil-moisture-based pump-set operation to intelligently reduce power used for agricultural purposes, AC cycling to drive both energy efficiency and peak load shaving, and renewable integration to incorporate cheaper solar and wind power supply without impacting reliability or quality of service. 

Speaking to The Hans India, APEPDCL Chairman and Managing Director H Y Dora said that recently APEPDCL received the proposal regarding the DSM project. The project which deals with management of power demand is a good method.

As per the proposals received, APEPDCL had appealed for some changes like discount in tariff quoted. They are waiting for revised quotes regarding the DSM project. Later they will consider the performance and preserve the process how the project worked in the southern power discom region before going ahead with this technology, he added.

He also said that in the DSM project, the main feature which facilitates not only the discom to monitor the grid, it also helps the consumer to switch on and off all his electrical home appliances with a mobile app as the sensors were connected to internet.