Ms. Athira Panicker will present her BPS as per the details below:
Date: 28th February 2025
Time: 1400–1500 hrs.
Place: C-TARA Conference Room No.2
Title: Electricity Distribution System Loading and Load Management to improve supply on Agricultural feeders as per irrigation requirements and farmer practices.
Guide: Prof. Priya Jadhav
RPC Members: Prof. Parmeshwar Udmale (CTARA), Prof. Narendra Shiradkar (EE)
Abstract:
In Maharashtra state, India, 25% of the total electricity generated is used in irrigation. The electricity supply for irrigation is of poor quality resulting in low energy efficiency. Most farmers are marginal and small. Only 25% of farmers have access to irrigation. Increasingly unreliable rainfall is leading to a greater requirement for irrigation access. Also, agricultural electricity supply is mostly unmetered and hence there is no data on the voltages, interruptions or loading on the agricultural electricity distribution system. Hence, the loading pattern or load behavior is not taken into consideration while determining load on the distribution infrastructure.
The study is conducted in the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions of Maharashtra with a high concentration of vulnerable farmers. In these rainfed regions, protective irrigation can lead to large yield differences. In these cases, where the energy requirement is low, energized irrigation can lead to major gains. However, the infrastructure cost per connection is quite high, making optimization of infrastructure utilization more essential. Current agricultural electricity distribution design does not consider farmers' irrigation requirements and irrigation patterns. The study quantifies the diversity in loading as per the seasonality of irrigation requirements based on cropping in a village/area. Farmer practices, daytime, and nighttime loading, and usage of drip and sprinkler, farmer classification, are some of the factors that interact to affect infrastructure requirements.
The existing peak load demand on a Distribution Transformer (DT) can be managed by irrigation scheduling with the knowledge of farmer irrigation practices. In this work, we investigate DT level load management initiatives that can reduce infrastructure requirements, and improve energy efficiency as well as the quality of supply to farmers. 25 to 30 farmers connected to one Distribution Transformer, coordinate their pumping schedule, so as not to overload the network.