Institutional capacity building of the Load Despatch Centres in India

In India there are close to forty (40) Load Despatch Centres (control centres) for power system and electricity market operation. In order to assess capabilities of these Load Despatch Centres (LDCs), a nationwide survey was conducted with the help of a questionnaire. This paper draws inferences from the findings of the survey. It emphasizes that institutional capacity building of the LDCs in India is highly relevant in view of the ongoing reforms and restructuring, increasing vulnerabilities of the interconnected grid, rapid growth in the interconnection size, generation capacity addition, equipment/human failure, cyber attacks, environmental threats and fast changing regulatory framework in India. The paper argues that the effective coordination amongst the system operators can come by establishing functional and financial autonomy of the LDCs as well as by strengthening the capabilities of the human resource working in the LDC.