Energetica India 89 - May 2020

management with analytics were also popular picks with survey respondents. Fifty-seven percent said these capabili- ties were planned for their organizations. Both AMI and the sensors associated with a FLISR solution support the main drivers that utilities named for grid mod- ernization efforts. One of those drivers was increased monitoring, control and automation capabilities, and it was a motivator for 84 percent of survey takers. Two other drivers — improved reliabili- ty and improved operational efficiency plus volt/VAR management — were se- lected by 82 percent or survey takers. AMI supports all of these drivers. For instance, by analyzing blink counts, utilities can pinpoint feeders with exces- sive transient outages so that crews can investigate possible causes, such as vegetation or animal-intrusion issues. That helps reliability. Likewise, newer AMI meters can deliver power quality data, which means those equipped with this functionality can be strategically placed around the distribution system to serve as bellwethers to voltage sags and spikes and/or frequency excursions. Analytics underpins use cases like these, and it can help with overall sys- tem operations. Not long ago, data from a newly built, 420-megawatt gross pow- er plant feeding a large manufacturing site showed excessive vibration and heat coming from one of the genera- tors. The data showed that this was not normal in comparison to other systems. After a couple weeks of monitoring the anomaly, the utility shut down the pow- er generating equipment and detected bearing issues. The bearings had com- pletely dried out. This discovery saved the company $1.7 million dollars, and now managers are rolling out this analyt- ic approach throughout the organization. That’s a win on the reliability scoreboard. Meanwhile, all these planned solutions — AMI, FLISR, advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) and as- set management tools — deliver data that can help utilities accommodate the most important application they believe they’ll need to support: DER. From Here to There Budget constraints were one of the big- gest impediments our Smart Utilities Report survey respondents found to im- plementing smart infrastructure and solu- tions like FLISR, ADMS and AMI. Money issues were tied with competing priorities — each was cited by 62.5 percent of re- spondents — as top barriers to modern- ization, and regulatory hurdles earned a vote from 48.2 percent of respondents. POWER SECTOR 48 energetica INDIA- May_2020 In India rooftop solar is an obvious manifestation of DER