IIT Gandhinagar develops framework to cut back injury to energy transmission programs throughout cyclones

By PTI

NEW DELHI: Researchers on the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, have developed a complete framework that may scale back the injury to energy transmission programs in coastal areas below cyclone situations.

The workforce used damage-cum-wind pace information of Cyclone Fani in Odisha to develop a fragility mannequin for towers, which helps assess the performance of the community and the affect of strategic interventions on the identical.

According to the workforce, they discovered that essentially the most environment friendly technique may very well be to choose a fraction of towers from the very best wind pace zones (in line with the Indian requirements) which might be related to substations serving a big inhabitants.

Strengthening towers nearest to the coast might considerably assist scale back the variety of towers broken throughout a cyclone, however its resultant influence on the affected inhabitants will not be as vital.

The examine outcomes revealed {that a} larger variety of strengthened towers or a larger degree of strengthening in them based mostly on tailored and environment friendly reinforcement prioritisation methods in a selected area results in higher performance of energy transmission programs.

The analysis workforce additionally discovered that strengthening the towers in a transmission line related to necessary substations (significance was quantified by way of inhabitants served by the substation) near the shoreline led to most enhancement in efficiency, which means lesser inhabitants is affected, they claimed.

“This is a first of its kind research work because here we were able to consider a large-scale network, its relationship with the coastline, a suitable context-specific fragility curve for the towers, and realistic cyclone scenarios in a reasonable manner, which led to interesting insights into strengthening strategies for the power transmission network of Odisha. The framework can be useful for cost-effective strengthening of transmission tower networks of other coastal states of India as well, such as West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Maharashtra,” stated, Manish Kumar, Associate Professor at IIT Gandhinagar.

“The towers can be prioritised differently if a different performance metric is selected. Structural strengthening that would lead to the shift in the fragility curves considered in this study can be based on wind-tunnel tests and/or computational fluid dynamics analyses, which will further optimise the resources. This approach may also be relevant for transmission lines associated with some power plants that may require a shutdown in the event of damage to the lines,” he added.

The researchers noticed that the loss in performance of transmission towers relies upon significantly on the situation of the landfall of the cyclone.

The injury was larger if the landfall was near a area with many substations within the neighborhood.

This remark emphasises the necessity to think about the orientation of the community with respect to the shoreline and the practical properties of cyclones.

Researchers additionally famous that the lack of performance in energy transmission may very well be affected significantly by the trail of a cyclone earlier than making landfall.

“A simulated cyclone trajectory indicated that it could damage towers even up to 300 km apart from each other, which further underscores the need to perform such studies on a holistic scale. The framework developed by the team helps in prioritising the towers that should be strengthened to minimise the overall losses in functionality in a cost-effective manner,” he stated.

The workforce thought of two broad facets to determine towers for precedence strengthening which have been identification of a geographical area and foundation for prioritisation inside that geographical area.

Each intervention recommended by the workforce is exclusive from one another by way of number of a geographical area, the premise for prioritising the towers, the variety of towers to strengthen, and the extent of strengthening thought of.

“In post-disaster scenarios, decision-makers always face a constraint on 3Ms, i.e. Manpower, Money (budget), and Materials. Hence, there is a need to supplement the bird-eye view with the component level view to identify the right set of components that should be reinforced and strengthened to minimise damage after natural calamities,” stated Udit Bhatia, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at IITGN.

“Changing climate scenarios and upward trend in frequency and magnitudes of cyclones as a consequence of increasing Sea Surface Temperature put our coastal infrastructure at a greater risk. While our understanding of these hazards has increased significantly in recent years, still a lot needs to be done on the adaptation side. Our framework brings us one step closer to possible solutions that stakeholders and infrastructure managers can invest in,” added Bhatia.