The Rs 30 crore project has been funded by the Department for International Development, UK, under the Andhra Pradesh Energy Efficiency Project. The project scope encompasses design, supply, erection and commissioning of the SCADA system with a control centre in Hyderabad for 132kv and 33kv substations in and around Hyderabad.

The SCADA system will provide immediate benefits to APCPDCL in terms of availability and quality of power as well as lower outage and interruption time.

Says ABB India managing director and country manager Ravi Uppal: "ABB is proud to have implemented this state-of-the-art SCADA system, which will enable a significantly higher degree of control and monitoring of the power distribution network and offer visible benefits to Andhra Pradesh and the citizens of Hyderabad and Secunderabad." ABB's leading-edge technology will offer APCPDCL immediate access to power system status, enhanced monitoring of power system security and enable direct preventive actions and faster restoration.

The SCADA system offers operational advantages by integrating distribution automation functionalities like automatic/remote meter reading, load balancing and trouble-call management to facilitate effective distribution management.

The SCADA system will facilitate collection of all relevant information from these substations to be sent to the central computer system installed at the APCPDCL control room. This will be done over a TDMA backbone and over digital UHF data radios covering an area of 1,500 sq km.

A similar SCADA solution has already been implemented by ABB for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, serving the city of Chennai.