By Stefan Fassbinder / Published on Wed, 2008-06-04 17:56
LV overhead wiring in an old suburban residential area where extensions - modifications - repair are often done using overhead cables instead of bare conductors (especially in the proximity of trees)
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Wed, 2007-10-24 07:30
Demonstrating poor quality
For electricity consumers in India, supply interruptions and low voltage levels are a constant source of concern. Utility companies recognize the problem and are now making major investments to improve Power Quality (PQ). However these improvements are coupled to tariff increases. To verify if real PQ improvements have been made, effective monitoring of the supply quality is crucial. Monitoring also helps track the sources of interruptions and enable comparisons of PQ at various locations.
Governments and regulatory commissions in India use IEEE developed reliability indices such as CAIDI, SAIDI, and SAIFI. These indices require extensive measurements and complex calculations and their use is still in an initial phase in India.
Prayas has now developed a complementary tool, the Electricity Supply Monitoring Initiative (ESMI). Prayas is an Indian non-governmental, non-profit public charitable trust involved with health, energy, learning, and parenthood initiatives. The concept of ESMI is to execute basic monitoring of supply continuity and voltage levels at ordinary consumer locations, in order to get an idea of the actual situation in the field and to increase the accountability of electricity utilities. A data logger records the supply voltage at one minute intervals, as well as the timing and duration of supply interruptions.
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