Power System Operation Corporation Limited is a wholly ownedGovernment of India enterprise under the Ministry of Power. It was earlier a wholly owned subsidiary of Power Grid Corporation of India Limited. It was formed in March 2009 to handle the power management functions of PGCIL. It is responsible to ensure the integrated operation of the Grid in a reliable, efficient, and secure manner. It consists of 5 Regional Load Despatch Centres and the National Load Despatch Centre. The subsidiary was eventually made a separate company in January 2017, leaving the parent firm with only the task of setting up transmission links. The load despatch functions, earlier handled by PGCIL, have since been entrusted to POSOCO.
History
Central Government through Ministry of Power in exercise of the power conferred by sub-section of Sect 26 and sub-section of Section 27 of the Electricity Act, 2003, by notification dt. 27 September 2010 in the Gazette of India notified that the Power System Operation Corporation Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited shall operate National Load Despatch Centre and the five Regional Load Despatch Centers, with effect from 1 October 2010. The subsidiary was set up on the recommendations of a government committee headed by G.B. Pradhan, additional secretary in the Union ministry of power. To make load despatch centres financially self-reliant and autonomous, the committee recommended independent and sustainable revenue streams. The move to separate the two functions is in keeping with the provisions of the Electricity Act, 2003, which seeks to separate commercial interests from load management functions. The Pradhan committee report had recommended setting up a separate representative board structure overseeing the functions of the five regional load despatch centres run by PGCIL—the northern, eastern, north-eastern, western and southern regions at that time. The subsidiary was eventually made a separate company effective from 3 January 2017.
Leadership and management
Mr. Sushil Kumar Soonee was the first Chief Executive Officer of POSOCO and a special invitee in the Board meetings. At present followings are the full-time functional directors on the board of POSOCO:-
Sh. K.V.S. Baba, Chairman and Managing Director
Sh. Praveen Kumar Agarwal, Director
Ms. Meenakshi Davar, Director
Sh. Ranjan Kumar Srivastava, Director
Sh. S.R. Narasimhan, Director
POSOCO has the following offices:
National Load Despatch Centre
Regional Load Despatch Centres
# Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre – New Delhi
# North-Eastern Regional Load Despatch Centre – Shillong
In order to facilitate the management of large scale renewable integration in the grid including respective generation-scheduling and generation-forecasting, four Renewable Energy Management Centres are under development: Northern Regional-REMC, Western Regional-REMC, Southern Regional-REMC and National-REMC.
National Load Despatch Centre
On 25 February 2009 the National Load Despatch Centre was inaugurated by Sushilkumar Shinde and Shiela Dixit. National Load Despatch Centre has been constituted as per Ministry of Power notification, New Delhi dated 2 March 2005 and is the apex body to ensure integrated operation of the national power system.
Regional Load Despatch Centers (RLDCs) and the state transmission systems under them
The five RLDCs oversee the interstate transmission for the following states:
Each RLDC maintains their own dedicated website where scheduling and despatch of power within their respective control areas are handled round the clock.
The Northern Region Grid, which provides power to nine states in northern India including Delhi, experienced a widespread outage due to a grid disturbance that occurred at about 2.35 a.m on 30 July 2012. Restoration work started immediately under the direction of CEO, POSOCO and POWERGRID's chairman & managing director. A team of engineers tried to find out a way for restoring the normal supply of power immediately, so that railways, Metro, airports and other power users deemed essential could get immediate restoration of electricity. With the coordinated efforts of the whole team of engineers and constituent state utilities, power supply to the essential services and other essential loads in northern India was restored by about 8.00 a.m. and about 60% of load of the Northern Region was restored by 11:00 am. This was possible by gearing up the power supply from hydroelectric sources and also extending power from the Eastern and Western regions for start-up supply for thermal generating units of the Northern Region. Thus the associated problems for want of power supply could be partially overcome by this time. Later, power supply was restored progressively and by 12:30 p.m. power was extended to most of the cities and towns through POWERGRID sub-stations. The Northern Grid was brought back to normalcy to meet the demand of about 30 GW at 7:00 p.m. On 31 July 2012, the northern grid collapsed for a second time, hours after the power supply was restored in the entire northern region following a disruption on the previous day. The eastern transmission lines also failed, disrupting power supply in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Assam and Punjab, among other states. s Power Minister Veerappa Moily said that transmission grids will be independently audited in three months to ensure that the grids are fail-safe.
