'Suggestions for BESCOM'

1. Plan/policy to replace the existing florascent/sodium vapor lamps with solar lightings in exteriors areas of all the govt office buildings

2. Plan/Policy to replace the florascent/sodium vapor street lamps with solar lightings.

This would be a win-win situation, i.e power savings, employment generation, new industrial and economic activity.

Manivannan sir,

Thanks for initiating the much needed public consultation reforms in BESCOM. I wish you all the best in your endeavors.

For the meeting, I am sure Praja members who are on ground would certainly avail the opportunity to attend the meeting tomorrow.

Since BESCOM is a huge organization and has many layers of operations, I am trying to understand where Praja members can pool their collective wisdom and help BESCOM.

Any specfic areas of BESCOM operations that Praja can help with?

-Syed

 Hi Murali,

MC is me! I had written this in an email to Shri P Manivannan.

I guess running a business takes so much time! But i'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow (tuesday).

If the goal of BESCOM is to transform itself into a corporate organisation, it should first do what corporates do best - outsourcing! :-)

In a limited way, distribution franchisees can do the job of revenue collection, keeping a tab on T&D losses {including theft and dacoity}!

Becoming lean and mean is the corporate mantra, so BESCOM should not be left behind.

And distribution franchising does not bring in with it the additional political baggage of "privatisation", so while the benefits of a "privatised" distribution is there, BESCOM {and hence the Govt} can keep a tab.

Dear Friends,

We, at BESCOM, would like to thank the partcipants of the first meeting towards forming a 'user forum/council' for supporting BESCOM in its effective functioning. This will be a participatory mechanism.

As we discussed in the meeting, we have 1 month time to make the draft for the formation & functioning of the forum. The frame work needs to be finalised before we jump into advising BESCOM, however entycing it may be!

I can see the 'members-in-waiting' impatient to make suggestions. Its easy to suggest. But difficult to implement. Our task is not easy. But, not impossible also. The enthusiasm shown by the members gives me confidence that this will work, and will be a win-win for both the customers and BESCOM.

After the formation of the forum, the members, however knowledgeble and enlightened, need to patiently study the organisation (BESCOM), to make suggestions that will work. Let us not forget that the Engineers in BESCOM have more than 2 decades of experiance, and are generally as good as any other professional.

So, my requst is, after the formation of the forum, lets spend time on understanding BESCOM. As they say, to teach Geography to John, you should know both: Geography and John. Lets understand both.

regards,

Manivannan

 I wrote my post before your post became visible.  Your suggestion is an excellent one, although, to be perfectly blunt, I keep worrying about how long they will keep you at BESCOM before a reshuffle.  So there is a sense of urgency also.

I think folks at PRAJA can get started on the understand BESCOM portion even before the forum is formed and is functioning.  PRAJA can also be a good place (repository) of gained knowledge.  Are there some information sources you can point to that will get us started?

As you know, public interactions result in a flood of suggestions, many not all be necessarily practical or easy to implement.  More often than not, at a higher level of abstraction, you can extract a general principle out of many of the suggestions - such as perhaps, use more green sources of electricity and we will pay more!  As the experts, it is your job to guide the discussion to take maximum value from it and it appears that you are doing exactly that! So thank you for that too!

I would like to bring to your notice that MERC has initiated a study towards impact of Automated Demand Response on Mumbai System. In Mumbai, It has been noted that if 10% of the peak demand were to be reduced, it will bring down the tariff by Rs.0.2/unit. I believe similar initiative needs to be taken up in Bangalore which houses large commercial and office complexes.

Today most of us as consumers are not aware as when utility face crunch situations like peak hours (demand more than supply), constraints (sudden loss of generation), emergencies (grid frequency falling out of permissible limits 49.5~50.2Hz, UI etc). Utilities have this data but it needs to be communicated to consumers. Had the information of crunch situations been available to consumers and consumers contribute their little in switching off unwanted loads for 30~60mins max...we can avoid load shedding or brown outs. In the event of load shedding to manage the cruch situations it is just a no-win situation either to utility or customers. FKCCI states that power cuts leads to thousands of crores of rupees of losses to industries and running on diesel genset is not a viable option both econmically and environmentally.

To use a true but often over-quoted phrase it is all about turning data into information, and information into knowledge. But even that is not enough. For grid application to be effective we need to turn that knowledge into action. Action is where the value is.

Automated Demand Response is automation of Load Curtailment Process. I did an quick study in Bangalore with about 40 buildings and see that they consume about 120MW together. If peak hour information was available to these buildings, they can automatically reduce their consumption by about 20MW, all by simply manipulating the HVAC systems without compromising the comfort. I believe across Bangalore definitely during peak ADR can produce a reduction of 100+ MW.

Benefits are manifold.

For Utilities: a) it can avoid purchase of peak power to the consumption reduction leading to reduction in cost of operations leading to reduction in tariffs or atleast maintaining the statu-quo. b) Manage the UI drawals much better which again is a drain on the utlity cash pool c) delivery power 24x7 d) reduce T&D losses etc.

For Consumers: a) 24x7 power supply b) reduced tariffs c) opportunity to be part of save earth campaign.

In Western countries Automated Demand Response provides opportunities for consumers to earn money out of energy savings....utilities pay money to consumers for having reduced their consumption during cruch hours. I believe similar mechanism too can be evolved in India as Utility's avoided costs are much than those spent.

I would urge BESCOM to initiate a study and run a pilot of Automated Demand Response and I believe it were to adopt ADR, there will be tremendous impact.

Raghu