Pinpoint faults, prevent cyber attacks

Bescom’s HSR centre does all of this and more

By NIRMALA G

Last month, Bescom’s HSR centre has begun testing a few 11KV feeders that will precisely determine the location of a power failure. Earlier, it was completely manual, took many man-hours and was labour-intensive. But now, this would be detected within no time, thanks to Karnataka’s first centre for distribution automation system (DAS). Once completely operational after this pilot run, around 120 feeders would be connected, benefitting over five lakh Bescom users.

Funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) and designed by Efacec, a Portuguese firm, DAS uses real-time parameters covering the feeder lines, distribution centres, directional pathways and supply centres. With every system under one roof, it is now easy to pinpoint the area where the power supply is interrupted, so the personnel can go directly to the problem spot and fix it.

That’s not all. The HSR centre will also prevent any cyber attacks on the smart power grid of Bangalore. All the servers are operating out of HSR and so is a dedicated cyber security wing filled with trained personnel. Earlier, the servers were physically located at the State Data Centre in the city centre and Infosys was handling the operations in Electronics city.

But now, with everything under one roof at its DASS centre in HSR Layout, the data and management is far more safer and secure, according to Bescom officials. Bescom has a paperless office with digital signatures, dedicated user accounts and passwords. Take that to mean, no one can hack into the system. And even if someone tries to, the hawk-eyed personnel stationed round the clock will thwart such threats in no time. The cyber security will be handled by three separate wings—Information and Communication Technology, Smart Grid and Information Security and Planning wing. All of this is to ensure that no hacker takes control of the network.

This apart, Bescom has the majority of its Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP) online. Be it the website, billing, financial transactions, collection of resources, estimates and GIA, 17 different modules are routed through servers and websites. Any person can hack, log in and play havoc with the system. However, with this centre, Bescom completely owns its entire infrastructure and therefore, it is now more capable than ever before to safeguard its big data centre.