Piyush Goyal, the Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines launched a weather portal for Power sector on 23 June 2017 that will help all the electricity distribution companies of India in managing power distribution.
The Ministry launched the portal in association with the Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) at the meeting of the Forum of Regulators in New Delhi.
The information available in the Portal regarding weather forecast shall help State Discoms to take pro-active steps regarding short term and medium term management processes and supply planning requirements.
It would also enable better planning for infrastructure availability to ensure cost effective and reliable supply. It will also promote use of green and clean power more transparently and competition for lower costs as information will be available to all stakeholders including generators and utilities for more efficient procurement.
The transparency in the information sharing would also create pressure on utilities for continued efficiency.
Besides this, Power Minister Piyush Goyal also launched another portal called ‘MERIT’ (Merit Order Despatch of Electricity for Rejuvenation of Income and Transparency).
The portal is developed by the Ministry of Power in association with POSOCO and Central Electricity Authority.
It displays extensive array of information regarding the merit order of Electricity procured by states such as daily state-wise marginal variable costs of all generators, daily source-wise power purchases of respective states/UTs with source-wise fixed and variable costs, energy volumes and purchase prices.
Regional Weather Summary- This provides Weather Outlook for the Region for the current day and upto next 7 days. Weather stations of Meteorological department have been mapped to the nearest important Power Stations in each State.
- The Meteogram at Web-Portal provides plots for meteorological variables such as rainfall, cloud cover, temperature, humidity, wind, speed, sea level pressure and indices for thunderstorm for 10 days with a resolution time of three hours.
- Each Meteogram provides information for 10 km radius. Region Specific Forecast – Fog Forecast, Metar, Bay Bulletin, Coastal Area Bulletin, Cyclone, Port Warning etc.
Day to day weather variations have an impact on load demand and energy production, transport and distribution management, as well as energy prices. - Extreme events such as heat waves or cold waves, wind storms or floods can have dramatic consequences on the production means or the electrical grid of a country including physical damage to the infrastructure.
