ABB helps solve power challenges in downtown Bangalore

As part of this effort, a new substation being built by ABB in the heart of the city will help to meet the rising demand for power, and improve the quality and reliability of electricity in Bangalore.

The city is a major manufacturing hub and the center of India’s booming IT industry. Since the 1960s, its population has increased more than four-fold, and is now around 6 million. This has led to a significant increase in industrial and consumer demand for electricity, which means new infrastructure is needed to provide the city’s homes and businesses with quality power supplies they can depend on.

KPTCL is working hard to meet Bangalore’s power challenges and recently contracted ABB to build a 220/66 kV substation, equipped with the most up-to-date gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system, providing data to the local distribution company.

Substations are vital components of transmission and distribution systems. The equipment they house includes switchgear, for the control, protection and regulation of power supplies, and transformers, which are used to step-up or step-down the voltage.

Perfect fit
In general, the higher the voltage level, the more power a substation handles and the more space it needs. GIS technology can shrink substation footprints by up to 70 percent, from the size of a soccer pitch to a small garden, and is very reliable. A typical GIS substation is one-tenth the size of an equivalent air-insulated switchgear (AIS) installation.

GIS technology allows substations to be built in space-restricted areas like city centers, offshore oil and gas platforms, power plants and office buildings. The installations are so compact they can often be concealed in a building to blend in with the local architecture.

The substation in Bangalore equipped with ABB’s advanced GIS has a much smaller footprint than its air-insulated alternative. This is extremely valuable in cities where land is expensive or simply unavailable, and where local planning regulations may limit the type of installation that can be built.

Because of its city-center location, building work for the substation had to be carefully coordinated with local authorities. For example, site deliveries were allowed between 11pm and 6am only to avoid disrupting local services. The project is scheduled for completion in December 2009 and will be commissioned in early 2010.

Reliable city power
The new KPTCL substation will provide reliable power supplies for essential services, such as hospitals, water treatment works and the Bangalore Metro, as well as homes and businesses in the city and the wider Bangalore area.

ABB delivered the world’s first gas-insulated (GIS) substation in 1965 and has since delivered tens of thousands of GIS bays worldwide, including the world’s largest GIS installations at the Itaipu hydropower plant in Brazil (delivered in 1984) and the Three Gorges hydropower plants in China (delivered in 2006). ABB’s GIS substations have also been installed in the world’s most densely populated cities, including New Delhi, London, New York and Manila.

ABB is also dedicated to developing industry standards of substation automation. Since 1995, the company has helped to develop the IEC 61850 substation communications standard. This standard improves the ability of electronic devices from different manufacturers to exchange information, bringing greater interoperability and simplicity to substation automation.

The standard is fully implemented throughout ABB’s portfolio of substation automation products and systems, which will play an important role in facilitating the development of smart grids.

Bangalore’s investment in new infrastructure using the most advanced technologies available is typical of many cities in emerging markets, which are an increasingly important source of business for ABB. As they expand networks and install new capacity, these economies can invest in the most up-to-date equipment available to achieve the highest levels of efficiency and reliability.