Raj Kumar Singh dedicates Automatic Generation Control to the nation
1 min read 04 Jan 2022, 05:24 PM ISTThe Automatic Generation Control sends signals to power plants every four seconds to maintain frequency and thereby reliability of India’s power system.
PremiumNew Delhi: Power and new and renewable energy minister Raj Kumar Singh on Tuesday dedicated Automatic Generation Control (AGC) to the nation. The AGC sends signals to power plants every four seconds to maintain frequency and thereby reliability of India’s power system.
“This is expected to facilitate achieving the government’s ambitious target of 500 GW non-fossil fuel-based generation capacity by 2030. The AGC is being operated by Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) through National Load Despatch Centre. Through AGC, POSOCO sends signals to power plants every 4 seconds to maintain frequency and reliability of the Power System," union power ministry said in a statement.
All possible measures are taken to ensure that the grid frequency always remains within the 49.90-50.05 Hz (hertz) band. The state-run Posoco oversees the country’s critical electricity load management functions through the National Load Dispatch Centre (NLDC) and a set of regional load dispatch centres (RLDCs) and state load despatch centres (SLDCs). India has 33 SLDCs, five RLDCs—for the five regional grids that form the national grid—and one NLDC.
“Through AGC, NLDC (National Load Despatch Centre) sends signals to more than 50 power plants in the country every 4 seconds to maintain the frequency and reliability of the Indian Power System," the statement said.
“While speaking on the 5th POSOCO Day, Shri R.K. Singh remarked that India is getting ready for integration of large-scale variable & intermittent renewable sources and one of the major tools for enabling the frequency control is AGC," the statement said and added, “He impressed that under the POSOCO’s AGC project, till date 51 GW of generation capacity across all five regions is operational."
This assumes importance given that four out of India’s five regional load despatch centres (RLDCs) that help oversee the country’ critical electricity load management functions have witnessed cyber-attacks. Red Echo, a hacker group affiliated with the Chinese government, has repeatedly targeted India’s power grid earlier this year.
“On the country’s march towards achieving the renewable energy capacity of 175 GW in 2022, we have achieved an installed capacity of 150 GW of renewable energy, including large hydro projects. 63 GW of renewable energy capacity are under various phases of installation, which is expected to be completed by next year," the statement said quoting Singh.
