Energetica India Magazine May-June 2021

GRID 41 energetica INDIA- May-June_2021 However, recent advances now make it possible for each RTU to act autono - mously or communicate by radio with a telemetry data gateway that is connect - ed to a cloud computing infrastructure equipped with appropriate software ca - pable of presenting processed informa - tion to management. Reliable low-band telemetry can collect data from most assets in the energy sector, where they act as the ‘canary in the mine’ when it comes to predicting, diagnosing and communicating outage events. One of the key benefits of RTUs is that they can perform autonomous control in real time and then report to SCADA that it has everything under control. Op - erators at the SCADA interface can ‘su - pervise’ the operations by setting new KPIs or updating instructions — open/ close this, start/stop that, for example — for RTUs to then act upon and manage locally. This ability makes them particularly suit - ed to the power generation sector be - cause RTUs are resilient to the site envi - ronment, have an ability to operate with minimal drain on local power resources, whilst retaining the processing power to perform local control algorithms auton - omously. Despite this, some utility companies across the globe are using outdated or first-generation telemetry that simply isn’t up to the job. Conversely, the latest RTUs have been designed specifically to overcome the challenges in the ener - gy and power sector. The message, re - ally, is that you may have used telemetry before, but the latest RTUs are a world away from first-generation units. Surge in data Smart power grids are vital to the suc - cess of a lower carbon future as well as reducing and preventing the number of outages. That means RTUs will contin - ue to play a prominent role in making sure assets between the point of gen - eration and the consumer operate effi - ciently. Gone are the days when there was a handful of large power generation plants with a relatively straightforward grid supply through to the consumer. The future is one of digitized and frag - mented distribution systems that are more responsive to the needs of con - sumers and producers. A consequence of growth in both the tra - ditional and renewables sector to cater for the 70 per cent increase in demand by 2040 will be an exponential surge in data. It is those companies that can col - lect, store, analyse, trend and action this as usable information that will be able to make real-time decisions around the condition of grid assets. It’s worth bearing in mind that one thing that works in favour of RTU systems is the financial benefit; avoiding outages is easy to understand and quantify finan - cially. Distribution automation is another ben - efit, because it allows assets to be con - trolled autonomously whilst avoiding having to place personnel in remote, hostile environments. That means te - lemetry projects have a rapid return on investment, making them self-funding in the short term. The message is that RTUs allow utility operators to react quickly when issues occur — in many cases, without having to send an engineer into the field be - cause the RTU makes autonomous de - cisions, within agreed parameters. This kind of approach is the only way that utility companies will be able to cope with greater diversification of as - sets, increased competition and ever more stringent demands from consum - ers. Decentralisation, moving electricity gen - eration from a few large hubs to a dis - tributed network, will be one of the larg - est challenges over the next decades. However, RTUs will make this possible by creating millions of new intelligent grid assets. The TBox LT2 offers outstanding func - tionality from a single, compact rug - ged unit.