Electric Power Grid Station in Pakistan
Electric Power Grid Station in Pakistan
What is a Grid Station?
An electric grid or power grid, is an interconnected network for delivering electricity from producers to consumers. It consists of:
- Generating stations that produce electric power
- Electrical substations for stepping electrical voltage up for transmission, or down for distribution.
- High voltage transmission lines that carry power from distant sources to demand-centers.
- Distribution lines that connect individual customers.
Structure of a Grid Station
Power stations are located at feasible locations-depending on the availability of fuel, the dam site or the efficient location of renewable sources. As a result, they are often quite far away from the populated areas. This is very practical, as the transmission of electrical power over longer distances is much more economical than the relative transmission of any other fuel.
How does a Power Grid Works?
A power grid can be divided into three stages: Power generation, transmission and distribution. Each of these stages is explained in detail below.
Power Generation
Electricity is produced in power stations, which are often located far from the inhabited areas. There are various forms of power stations, such as coal, nuclear, hydro, electric, wind etc.
Transmission
For the transmission of power over longer distances, the generated voltages are stepped up to a much higher level. A step up transformer is used for this purpose, which increases the voltage level with the corresponding decrease in the current. Stepping up the voltage is necessary to increase the transmission efficiency by reducing I2R losses in the transmission lines.
Distribution
Input from the transmission network is then lowered to a significantly lower voltage (say 33 to 66 kV) using a step-down transformer in the main step-down substation. Power is then distributed to distribution substations or directly to very broad industrial customers. At distribution substations, the capacity is further diminished (say, at 11kV).
Improvements in Grid Station in Pakistan over few years
- Electrical electricity flows from the power station to your home via a marvelous network named the power delivery grid. The grid is very public — if you live in a suburban or rural town, odds are it is right out in the open for all to see. In fact, it is so public that you probably do not even notice it anymore.
- Substation automation has slowly evolved from the classical remote terminal unit, to the current network based terminal unit. However, the inception of the Smart Grid is a catalyst towards a new evolutionary step in distributed automation.
- The endeavor of the Smart Grid is to support promising technologies that include smart metering systems, demand response systems, distributed generation management systems, electrical storage management systems and distribution automation systems. Implementation is precipitating a third evolutionary change to support applicable functionality in the current network-based substation automation platform: It is adding Intelligence to the network terminal unit.