Micropower generation units, designed by GE’s India R&D centre in Bengaluru over the past two years, are now close to the stage of commercialisation. The units are expected to be hugely beneficial to remote microgrid-dependent communities.
Business Standard reports that the technology is currently being used in two remote Bihar villages, Tayabpur and Behlolpur, some 2,000 km away, and also in some global locations.
They are checking the real-time power demand in these villages at different times using GE’s industrial IoT software platform Predix and are accordingly feeding the grid with energy so that there is no wastage or short supply.
“It’s loaded with our Predix software that forecasts demand and automatically balances between solar, diesel and the battery so that the grid is stable,” says Vinay B Jammu, vice president and head of physical-digital analytics and digital research at GE Global Research. “The only person on the ground is a site engineer who we can contact via an SMS in case the solar panels have become dusty, or to fill diesel for the generator, or for any other maintenance.”
The 15KW hybrid power units in Bihar are two of five such units GE is testing globally to find a viable and cost-effective solution to power microgrids. While two other units are located in villages in Ethiopia, it has another one in a mining town in Australia.
All the locations picked for the pilots are so inaccessible that the company thinks they might never get connected to the grid.
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