Enlightened!

The Madhya Pradesh Paschim Kshetra Vidyut Vitran (MPPKVVCL) or West Discon
was formed in 2002, as a result of the divestment of the Madhya Pradesh State
Electricity Board (MPSEB). The company is responsible for all activities
associated with distribution of power within its territory. The company
currently serves approximately 28 lakh customers and manages about 199,829 km of
lines, 945 substations, and over 80,000 distribution transformers. In 2008-09,
the distribution system conveyed 12,655 MU of energy

Due to different power needs of customers ranging from domestic users,
agricultural connections, commercial, and public service connections there was a
need to have a system to track and measure the load factor, consumption patters
according to seasons or time of the day and provide uninterrupted supply of
power. This initiative was also aimed at lowering power pilferage in the state.
This marked the launch of GeoAmpere (geomatics-based application model for
planning distribution of electricity to rural entities), covering twelve
districts of the state. The web based software provides a holistic view of
entire power distribution network comprising of substations (132, 33 KV) and
feeders (33/11 KV) and facilitates geomatics-based decision support, planning
and management. The GeoAmpere integrates census data like population of every
village. Its powerful search engine expedites the process of locating any
village along with its profile to give a holistic view in planning of any new
substation.

GeoAmpere is functional at the corporate level and it covers 33 KV lines and
11 KV lines up to village level radiating from 33/11 KV substations spread over
nearly 75,000 sq km of the company area. The next step is to provide access to
two regions, thirteen O&M circles and forty-nine divisions by making the
application an integral part of the network planning process. GeoAmpere has
enabled the erection of sixty substations through a systematic and scientific
evaluation, which has helped in saving 84 mn units of electricity amounting to
Rs 210 mn. GeoAmpere has covered all the 12,029 villages in its database and
about 1,890 villages with a population of 3.4 mn have reaped the benefits of
efficient power distribution and planning. The time and cost efficiency
improvements in delivering these services through GeoAmpere has cut the response
time by almost one-sixth.

Prior to deploying GeoAmpere, there was no digitized data available on the
power lines and their integration with the village profile was also not
available. Also, all line diagrams were available only on paper and the
information on the interconnectivity and possible alternatives or geographical
attributes were not available. Now, with the GeoAmpere in place, verification of
the spread and location of electrical resource or assets is available in
digitized format. Also, the software enables distance computation and helps in
measuring air distance as well as route lengths with its built-in traverse-aid
and distance computation tool. In addition, it displays other infrastructure
elements such as railways, roads, forests, etc, in addition to electrical
resources that help in analyzing the project rollout better. From a
manageability perspective, earlier evaluation of any new substation was a
tedious job, involving direct involvement of employees from each level such as
regional office, circle, division, and distribution center. Earlier, examining a
proposal took a minimum of three days, and now with GeoAmpere, it can be done
within four hours. Since the software optimizes the network, it results in
substantial opex savings. With its help 125 proposals have been evaluated, and
Rs 35 mn have been saved. In addition, another Rs 175 mn have been saved by
identifying the accurate location of substations.

Priya Kekre

priyak@cybermedia.co.in