What is Smart Grid?

What is Smart Grid?

A Smart Grid is an evolved Grid system that manages electricity demand in a sustainable, reliable and economic manner, built on advanced infrastructure and tuned to facilitate the integration of all involved. So tough definition? Let’s make it simple.

Smart Grid is a Power Grid monitored and controlled electronically to maximize efficiency and minimize outages.

This is a recent development in Electric Transmission and Distribution Sector, which enables bidirectional communication between consumer and electricity utility company. Now a day’s one of the fundamental challenges of power system operation is running a true supply-on-demand system that is expected to be absolutely reliable. Historically this challenge led to a power system based on highly controllable supply to match a largely uncontrolled demand. The use of smarter grid operations allows for greater penetration of variable energy sources through the more flexible management of the system.

Basically it is an electric power delivery system that stretches from point of generation to point of consumption. Integrated with advanced communications and information technology, all equipment and devices in a smart grid are connected by sensory elements to form a complete power network. The information is integrated and analyzed to optimize power resources, reduce costs, increase reliability, and enhance electric power efficiency.

A smart grid is an intelligent automated system for monitoring the flow of electricity and making the distribution of electricity more efficient. In a world where protecting the environment is a major concern, it is important to find cost-effective ways of reducing power usage and increasing energy independence.

Smart Grid is a combination of Energy, IT and Telecommunication Technologies.

To summarize,

• Smart Grid provides an interface between consumer appliances and the traditional assets in a power system (generation, transmission and distribution).

• It optimizes the assets of the power system.

• It supports better integration of distributed generation into the conventional centralized power system.

• It possess demand response capacity to help balance electrical consumption with supply.

Smart Grid Ecosystem:

Existing Power Supply Systems implement a Centralized Power Supply that often involves high voltages and large-scale electric power networks. With this type of power supply, failures in the electricity network can have a huge impact on the entire power supply system, and often cause widespread system shutdowns.

Because of this Smart Grid solutions is developed and implementing a Distributed Power Network instead of a centralized network is also considered. Distributed Power Networks are highly integrated and include power generation, power transmission, and power distribution, with power meters and home appliances, such as refrigerators, TV sets, washing machines, personal computers etc. also considered part of the network. A simplified Smart Grid Ecosystem is shown in figure below.

Why Smart Grid?

A Smart Grid solution provides the following benefits:

• Enhances energy usage efficiency

• Increases the proportion of distributed power generation systems and renewable energy solutions

• Enhances the flexibility of the power supply

• Reduces the overall costs of delivering power to end users

• Improves the stability and quality of the power supply

Thank you!

DC SHUNT MOTORS CHARACTERISTICS

Long Shunt and Short Shunt DC Compound Machine:

In short shunt DC Compound Machine, shunt filed winding is connected across the Armature whereas in Long shunt connection it is connected across the line terminal. But there is no difference in operating characteristic in two types of machine.

DC Shunt Generator Characteristics:

There are four basic quantities related to generator namely speed n, Terminal Voltage V_t , Armature Current I_aand Field Current I_f. 

The graphical relationship between two quantities while maintaining other two quantities constant is known as characteristics of Generator. Basically, there are four characteristics of any Generator:

1.    No load Characteristics:– Relationship between Ea and I_f. Ea = f(I_f)

2.    Load Characteristics:– Relationship between V_t and I_f. V_t= f(I_f)

3.   External Characteristics:- Relationship between V_t and I_L. V_t= f(I_L)

4.    Armature / Regulation Characteristics:– Relationship between I_f and I_a. I_f = f(I_a)

1.    No load and Load Characteristics:

2.   External Characteristics:

3. Armature Characteristics:

Typical Utility Pole

Typical North American utility pole, showing hardware for a residential 240/120 V split-phase service drop: (A,B,C) 3-phase primary distribution wires, (D) neutral wire, (E) fuse cutout, (F) lightning arrestor, (G) single phase distribution transformer, (H) ground wire to transformer case, (J) "triplex" service drop cable carries secondary current to customer, (K) telephone and cable television cables.

Power system Design Characteristics

The properly design characteristics of a power system are as shown below:

Substation

Major Components in Electrical Substations and their Workings

The power system is a constituent of power generation, transmission and distribution systems. For all the power system operations, substations are required for their course of action. Substations are congregation of electrical equipment through which consumers get supply of electrical power from generating stations. By varying the voltage levels or frequency or any other aspects, the required electrical quantity can be altered in substations to provide quality power to consumers.

Based on the application of substations, they are classified into different types: Generation substation, Indoor substation, Outdoor substation, Pole mounted substation, Switching substation, Transmission substation, Converter substation and Distribution substation. In rare cases like wind farm power generation system, multiple hydroelectric and thermal power plants one can observe the collector substation which is used for transferring power from multiple turbines into one transmission unit.

Substation

The substation is an assembly of the following major electrical equipments:

• Electrical Power transformers
• Instrument transformers
• Conductors& Insulators
• Isolators
• Bus bars
• Lightning arresters
• Circuit breakers
• Relays
• Capacitor banks and miscellaneous equipment

Electrical Power Transformer

Electrical Power transformer

A static electrical machine used for transforming power from one circuit to another circuit without changing frequency is termed as Power transformer. The transformers are generally used to step down or step up the voltage levels of a system for transmission and generation purpose. These transformers are classified into different types based on their design, utilization purpose, installation methods, and so on.

Instrument Transformers:

Instrument transformers

The current and voltage transformers are together called as the Instrument transformers.

Current Transformer

Current transformer is used for the measurement of the alternating current by taking samples of the higher currents of the system. These reduced samples are in accurate proportions with the actual high currents of the system. These are used for installation and maintenance of the current relays in substations for protection purpose which are normally have low-current ratings for their operation.

Potential Transformer

Potential transformer is quite similar to the current transformer, but it is used for taking samples of high voltages of a system for providing low-voltage to the relays of protection system and also to the low-rating meters for voltage measurement. From this low-voltage measurement, the actual system’s high voltage can be calculated without measuring high voltages directly to avoid the cost of the measurement system.

Conductors

Conductors

The material or object that obeys the electrical property conductance (mostly made of metals such as aluminum and copper) and that allows the flow of electric charge is called conductor. Conductors permit free movement of the flow of electrons through them. These are used for the transmission of power or electrical energy from one place (generating station) to another place (consumer point where power is consumed by the loads) through substations. Conductors are of different types and mostly aluminum conductors are preferred in practical power systems.

 Insulators

Insulators

The metal which does not allow free movement of electrons or electric charge is called as an insulator. Hence, insulators resist electricity with their high resisting property. There are different types of insulators such as suspension type, strain type, stray type, shackle, pin type and so on. A few types of insulators are shown in the above figure. Insulators are used for insulation purpose while erecting electric poles with conductors to avoid short circuit and for other insulation requirements.

Isolators

Isolators

Isolator is a manually operated mechanical switch that isolates the faulty section or the section of a conductor or a part of a circuit of substation meant for repair from a healthy section in order to avoid occurrence of more severe faults. Hence, it is also called as a disconnector or disconnecting switch. There are different types of isolators used for different applications such as single-break isolator, double-break isolator, bus isolator, line isolator, etc.

Bus Bars

Bus bars

The conductor carrying current and having multiple numbers of incoming and outgoing line connections can be called as bus bar, which is commonly used in substations. These are classified into different types like single bus, double bus and ring bus.

Lightening Arresters

Lightening Arresters

The substation equipments such as conductors, transformers, etc., are always erected outdoor. Whenever light surges occur then, a high-voltage pass through these electrical components causing damage to them (either temporary or permanent damage based on the amount of voltage surge). Therefore, to avoid this difficulty, lightening arresters are placed to pass the entire lightening surges to earth. There are other arresters which are used to ground the switching surges called as surge arresters.

Circuit Breakers

Circuit Breakers

For the protection of substation and its components from the over currents or over load due to short circuit or any other fault the faulty section is disconnected from the healthy section either manually or automatically. If once the fault is rectified, then again the original circuit can be rebuilt by manually or automatically. Different types of circuit breakers are designed based on different criteria and usage. But in general mostly used circuit breakers are Oil circuit breaker, Air circuit breaker, SF6 circuit breaker, Vacuum Circuit Breaker, and so on.

Relays

Relays

Relays are used for disconnecting the circuits by manual or automatic operation. Relay consists of the coil which is excited or energized and such that making the contacts of relay closed activates the relay to break or make the circuit connection. There are different types of relays such as over current relays, definite time over current relays, voltage relays, auxiliary relays, reclosing relays, solid state relays, directional relays,inverse time over current relays, microcontroller relays, etc. The above figure shows some basic relays and their operation.

Capacitor banks

A Capacitor bank is a set of many identical capacitors connected in series or parallel within a enclosure and is used for the power factor correction and basic protection of substation.These capacitor banks are acts as a source of reactive power, and thus, the phase difference between voltage and current can be reduced by the capacitor banks. They will increase the ripple current capacity of the supply. It avoids undesirable characteristics in the power system. It is the most economical method for maintaining power factor and of correction of the power lag problems.

Capacitor banks

Emerging trends in technological development have created advancement in the substation installation and maintenance. For example, SCADA, supervisory control and data acquisition technique made it possible to control a substation automatically from a remote location. For more data regarding miscellaneous components and technologies in substations, post your queries in the comments section below.

The Transistor

The transistor is one of two most important inventions of the last century. Without the transistor’s invention, most of the electronic devices on which you’re so hopelessly dependent would not exist. The modern age rely on the transistor – personal computers, televisions, smartphones, tablets, phablets, laptops, routers and foot massagers suffused with billions of them.
Transistors are to electronic devices what cells are to our bodies.

TRANSISTORS

   

    Diodes are made up from two pieces of semiconductor material, either silicon or germanium to form a simple PN-junction and we also learnt about their properties and characteristics. If we now join together two individual signal diodes back-to-back, this will give us two PN-junctions connected together in series that share a common P or N terminal. The fusion of these two diodes produces a three layer, two junctions, and three terminal devices forming the basis of a Bipolar Junction
Transistor, or BJT for short.

Transistors are three terminal active devices made from different semiconductor materials
that can act as either an insulator or a conductor by the application of a small signal voltage.
The transistor's ability to change between these two states enables it to have two basic
functions: "switching" (digital electronics) or "amplification" (analogue electronics). Then
bipolar transistors have the ability to operate within three different regions:

1.Active Region - the transistor operates as an amplifier and Ic = β.Ib
2.Saturation - the transistor is "fully-ON" operating as a switch and Ic = I(saturation)
3.Cut-off - the transistor is "fully-OFF" operating as a switch and Ic = 0

Transistors (MOSFET , BJT or JFET) has two major applications

1. use it as a switch
2. use it as an amplifier (to amplify current or voltage)

we will now talk about using it as a switch.

why do we use transistor as a switch ? why not any other device ?

So here’s the answer

Its because of the property of base terminal to control the current from collector to emitter. (in case of BJT)

The input voltage is always applied to “base” of the transistor and the output voltage is taken out from the “collector” terminal to the ground (in case of a common emitter BJT)

Now,

There are two conditions,

• If I don’t apply any voltage to the base terminal, the base current (Ib) will be zero and the transistor will remain in cutoff region since collector current (Ic) will be zero and the output voltage (Vout) will be equal to Vcc(+5 volts) and transistor will act as open switch. i.e (logic 1)

• If I apply input voltage (Vin) to the base terminal, the base current (Ib) will flow. But if I apply “specifically very high input voltage” (very high Vin) , to the base terminal, the base current will increase and thus the collector current current will increase. This increase in collector current will be very high (Ic will be very high) thus the transistor will go in saturation region.

since collector current (Ic) is very high and output voltage (Vout) will be zero

transistor now will act as closed switch.

So basically, the conceptual meaning is that the base acts as a controller and it allows the transistor to be open or close.

Base controls the flow of current from collector to emitter terminal.

That is a property of a “switch” hence transistor proves that it can be used as a switch.

what I wrote here is for your conceptual understanding of why transistor is used as a switch. I didn’t explained it in detail as you can find many websites explaining the working of transistor.