In partnership with BSES Yamuna Power Limited (BYPL), GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH) India conducted a one-day workshop on Use of Artificial Intelligence in Power Distribution Infrastructure for Maintenance on 9 August 2024 at The Park, New Delhi. IIIT Hyderabad (Smart City Living Lab, Machine Learning Lab) who lead the project, Deloitte, Plaksha University and IIT Hyderabad were the knowledge partners.
As the power distribution sector evolves, integrating cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes essential for enhancing operational efficiency, reliability, and safety. This workshop aimed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of how AI can be leveraged to optimise maintenance processes in power distribution infrastructure.
The workshop commenced with a welcome address by Mr. Kuldeep Sharma, Project Manager at GIZ, and opening remarks by Mr. Mukesh Dadhich, Head of Business Development, Sustainability, and Clean Technology at BYPL. Mr. Anand Budholia, CIO of BRPL, delivered the inaugural keynote address, highlighting the role of AI in transforming the maintenance of power distribution infrastructure.
They together set the stage by introducing the objectives of the workshop and emphasising the importance of AI in modernising power distribution infrastructure. IIIT-H team handed over the mementoes to the speakers as a token of respect.
Dr. Praveen Paruchuri, the team Lead of this project briefly explained about IIITH and the different activities happening at IIITH and also highlighted the various research activities taken up by Machine Learning Lab. Then he briefed on the project which IIITH team is working with BSES Yamuna Power in collaboration with GIZ.
Mrs. Anuradha Vattem, Chief Technology Architect at SCRC, IIIT Hyderabad, highlighted the significance of the energy domain for the Smart Cities and discussed how important it is to conserve energy for the future generations. In this context, She explained various activities being done as part of smart City Living Lab at IIITH including standard stack required for smart city solutions. She insisted on how visualisation plays a crucial role in bringing out awareness among various stakeholders and getting them effectively connected to the relevant domains.
In this context, she presented the dashboard for monitoring distribution transformers and how the insights generated would help the Operations and Maintenance (O&A) of Power Distribution Infrastructure. Ushasri Mogadali, Research Translation Engineer from SCRC, who contributed for the development also participated in the workshop and shared insights of dashboard development.
Then Dr. Pradeep Yemula, IIT Hyderabad and Mr. Srivathsa Gottipati, Ph.D student from IIIT Hyderabad presented a case study on the health index of Power Transformers, for maintenance of transformers. Mr. Rajeev from Deloitte also shared national and international level best practices on predictive maintenance in the power distribution sector, showcasing cutting-edge techniques.
Couple of panel discussions were conducted with the various experts working in the Power Sector and AI domain.
The first panel, moderated by Prof. Vishal Garg from Plaksha University, addressed the challenges and opportunities in the operation and maintenance of transformers in the power and energy sector. Esteemed panellists included Dr. Pradeep Yemula, Associate Professor, IIT Hyderabad; Rishi Nair, Project Manager, Climate Collective and Lalit Kumar, Chief Project Manager, Tata Power DDL.
The second panel, moderated by Anuradha Vattem, Lead Architect, Smart City Living Lab, IIIT Hyderabad delved into how AI is revolutionising operations and maintenance and monitoring the power distribution infrastructure. The panellists included Dr. Praveen Paruchuri, Associate Professor, IIIT Hyderabad; Dr. Rajeev Yadav, Associate Director, Deloitte; Meenakshi Vasist, Founder & CEO, TekUncorked and Abhishek Ranjan, Partner, EY Parthenon.
The panellists participated with lot of enthusiasm and the discussion gave lot of insights on the following aspects:
- Decarbonization, it’s need, and the challenges associated with it.
- The impact of improved energy efficiency on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
- Got knowledge on Unsustainable Development goals like affordable and clean Energy, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and Climate Action
- Gained insights on what all challenges the present power sector has been facing in the recent years
- What all need to be considered for enhancing grid reliability, efficiency, and customer experience
- The gap in technology in terms of enhancing grid reliability and efficiency
- Strategies that can mitigate the risk of AI system failures in critical power distribution operations
- Startup involvement in this sector
Many key members from BSES actively participated in the session and provided a new opening in the thinking process for various development in this sector.
Mementoes were given to the panel speakers, Mr. Vanga Venkatesh from GiZ helped in organising the whole event and making it successful and the key contributors of the project development were Mr. Srivathsa Gottipati and Ms Ushasri Mogadali.
August 2024