Answer:

India generates about 229GW of electricity making it one of the 5th largest electricity producer in the world. Much of the generated electricity is wasted during the transmission and this account to 40 percent of loss every year. Presently our electricity system is facing a number of challenges. These are shortage of power, power theft, and inaccessibility of electricity in rural areas, huge losses in the grid, poor reliability and inefficient power consumption. In order to tackle above problems including production waste and to support the demand of electricity Government has initiated a project by the name of Smart Grid

♤ Smart Grid envisages providing choices to each and every customer for deciding the timing and amount of power consumption based upon the price of the power at a particular moment of time

♤ Apart from providing choices to the consumer and motivating them to participate in the operations of the grid, causing energy efficiency and accommodating all generation and storage options, Smart Grid also envisages various properties for the Grid like self-healing and adaptive islanding. This all will enable electricity markets to flourish.

♤ Smart grids are sophisticated, digitally enhanced power systems where the use of modern communications and control technologies allows much greater robustness, efficiency and flexibility than today’s power systems.

♤ Power utilities around the world are adopting smart grid technologies to make the power infrastructure robust, self-healing, adaptive, interactive and cost effective

♤ It will save around 15-20% of electricity in the country

♤ By reducing the peak demand, a Smart Grid can reduce the need for additional transmission lines.

♤ Lower operating and maintenance costs thereby meaning lower peak demand

♤ Would result in reduction in carbon emissions.