GPRS Gateways Installed To Improve Service Quality For Agriculture

DHBVN (Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam) has decided to install Viola’s Arctic GPRS Gateways throughout the state to reduce blackouts and improve quality of service. This will be achieved by an initiative called RLMS (Rural Load Management System), which utilises the strength of Viola’s GPRS solution.

Vijayendra Kumar, Managing Director of DHBVN describes the operation of RLMS, “RLMS is a solution to provide reliable and quality power to our consumers. The utility has two million consumers of which nearly 200,000 are agricultural consumers who run submersible pumpsets to irrigate their farmlands. The total agricultural pump-set connected load is a massive 3000 MW. To ensure proper load management, the utility divides the consumers into three geographic regions and provides 6 to 8 hours power daily for agriculture pumpsets at separate time slabs during the day/night. For proper load management, care is taken to ensure that no agricultural group gets power at peak times of morning and evening. However, there was a tendency among the consumers to run their pumpsets even at peak times thus putting massive agriculture loads on the utility at peak time and leading to forced shutdowns/blackouts of large areas.”

As mentioned in the official press release, the RLMS units are programmed to compensate the farmers for any lost hours on account of local faults/maintenance. The units communicate with the ALDC (area load dispatch centre) in real-time, enabling the utility to provide better service through faster pinpointing of breakdowns, faster attendance of local faults, ensuring augmentation of overloaded distribution transformers and reduced burnout of farmers’ equipment on account of proper voltages. The utility is also able to ensure proper power factor correction on the feeder/substation as and
when required.

The RLMS system is monitored and controlled from a centrally located control room at the ALDC at Hisar, all through the Internet. The control room receives information of each distribution transformer and provides instantaneous information on various parameters concerning load pattern, consumption, quantity of power supplied, timings of supply, etc. For controlling theft and excess loads than those sanctioned, the system trips the distribution system. RLMS system is designed and installed completely by RS IT & POWER HUB (P) LTD., Viola’s Channel partner in India.