Communication Standards in Indian Power Sector - Coming of age

Time is a great leveler. 5 years back, we were struggling to get our standardization acts together in power system communications. Indian standards committees were more forced to accept international standards because, manufacturer's professed the greatness and customers evaluated and made themselves sure of its utility, rather than a collective, systematic and consistent effort at standard adoption, creation and implementation.

Last week as the BIS LITD10 seminar on standardization in control center and the subsequent LITD 10 sectional committee meeting drew to a close, i was atleast positive that even if we are slow, we are in the right direction. Combining this with how India went about adopting DLMS/COSEM as its national standard, with an India specific companion standard, things are slowly getting into place.

I was very impressed by the joint view point of the power industry players to not name all the new working groups created as smart grid groups, and there-by focusing on the bread-and-butter problems our Industry faces and make a road-map for the next 5-10 years, rooted in reality, and not rooted in problems of another market outside, and at the same time willing to incorporate the fundamental aspects of what is happening in the standardization space globally.

Smart Grid Interoperability Panel & Grid Interop

Smart Grid Interoperability Panel and Governing Board were elected and put in place to kick-start the ambitious smart grid project. The US Government grant for smart grid of 3.4 Billion were announced last month. The stimulus money, the SGIP and the Grid Interoperability Conference and the Smart Grd Cybersecurity report and the grands announced together with an equivalent or more contribution from Utilities really have put on schedule the Smart Grid roll out in US.

The Smart Grid support as part of Stimulus and the enhanced interest in the stakeholder community is pushing the standards initiative like never before. The time consuming and often diverse and duplicate efforts of various standards bodies is suddenly finding their activities being brought under a common umbrella. Always standardization that is driven more by regulation and government interest of a bigger goal brings about faster and better results, compared to efforts that are driven by the manufacturer community and perceived needs of a given segment. The Grid Interop agenda and meeting is a good indicator on how under the Smart Grid umbrella most of the protocol bodies and stakeholders participated and discussed common issues, which earlier would have got discussed at separate forums.

The Smart Grid after effects are being seen in the R-APDRP program in India, where one hears about how this program can lead to a future Smart Grid. The Smart Grid definition being so broad, wide and vague, it is very difficult to re-orient a program that has very specific objectives as in India, to drive towards a future of Smart Grid, without specific thought being put from a goal perspective into the program. However CIM / 61850 and Cyber Security focus will surely help this program