The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has released a unified framework for digitalisation of the distribution sector, encompassing digital infrastructure, data analytics, cybersecurity, standards and workforce development.
The framework seeks to bring greater integration among the digital systems being deployed by distribution companies. It recommends that discoms assess their existing digital maturity and operational requirements before taking up new investments. The proposed approach moves from network visibility and data quality to system integration, controllability, automation and optimisation. As part of the framework, CEA has identified advanced metering infrastructure, supervisory control and data acquisition, geographic information system, outage management system, advanced distribution management system and distributed energy resource management system as key systems. These would support applications such as load forecasting, distributed energy resource forecasting, outage prediction, asset health assessment and theft detection. The framework also proposes four levels of digital maturity, from basic digitalisation to advanced and autonomous operations.