Accurate weather forecast a must to gauge power demand via AI and purchase required units
Vijayawada: The AP Transco is looking for weather platforms that can forecast weather conditions more accurately so that it can, with the help of AI-based tools, assess the demand and purchase power accordingly from other states.
The aim is to ensure uninterrupted power supply in Andhra Pradesh. AP Transco has been using in-house developed AI tools for some time.
AP’s demand for power varies from time to time based on weather changes. Last month, it went up to the highest demand of 257 million units per day against the previous highest demand of 263 million units last year.
On an average, daily power demand fluctuates around 230-250 mu. In such a scenario, the AP Transco seeks an accurate forecast of weather including temperature, humidity and rainfall for every 15 minutes in a day.
At present, the agency is relying upon weather forecast platforms like IMD, Real Time Governance, Time and Date etc. They take 10 years of weather data from the planning department and check for important dates like holidays during the second Saturday or Sunday, festivals, IPL cricket match days, repeated events etc.
This data will be converted into coding and fed to the AI-based tool to get a forecast for power demand for the next day.
Officials say that if the weather data they get has more accuracy, it will help the AI tool to forest power demand with no error, unlike the current scenario of errors ranging from one per cent to less than three per cent.
“If we are able to get an accurate assessment on power demand for the next day through the AI tool, it will help us purchase power from other states as per demand forecast. In case of the forecast for power demand having some errors, we face the trouble of purchasing either more power or less power.”
“If the power we get is more than requirement, we will be incurring more expenditure. In case we get less power, there will be power outages causing unrest among the people,” the officials noted.
