Hydro power stations are a major source of providing our nations’ electricity. The total Hydropower resource in Pakistan is estimated at about 50,000 MW. Most of the assets are located in the North of the nation, mainly in the areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit, Chitral etc. where waterfalls, rivers and streams exist in a huge number hence providing ample sources of running water. Even though smaller (less than 50 MW) micro hydro plant sites are present throughout the country, if leveraged correctly, they can help reduce the power shortage that Pakistan increasingly has been facing over the past few years. The usual sponsors for such ventures are Agha Khan Foundation’s Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) and Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (PEDO), Pakistan’s Hydel Development Funds and other agencies like Asian Development Bank. The micro hydro plants deployed have not been utilized to their maximum potential as of yet due to the fact that these are mainly ‘deploy and forget’ schemes i.e. once the plans have been executed, no proper follow-ups are made on the operations of the plant, as these ventures are usually donor funded and the donors are interested up till the point that the money given has been utilized fully to the point of the plants’ inauguration, after that their eagerness and focus is shifted elsewhere as they usually have no say in the operational aspects of the micro hydro plant, instead just sound their grievances that the money given is not yielding the results promised when they were donating the amount and no return on investment (ROI) and feasibility is apparent to them for investing huge amounts in such projects.
The micro hydro plants are a daunting task to manage as they require 24/7 supervision of their operations and site manning is required i.e. the plant can’t be left on its own like in the case of renewable energy, rather at least 3 workers on 8 hour shifts are required to make sure that the plant is operating in a satisfactory manner. And once a problem occurs in any part of the work flow, the entire system is hampered which causes severe disruptions in the operational flow of the business and even the supply of electricity to the final customer for consumption can be hindered due to things like voltage and current flow issues.
Mostly these issues occur due to the fact that only the display for the electricity production is installed in the micro hydro plants installed in the micro hydro plants, no production or data log is being maintained, which makes it neigh impossible to measure the production efficiency of the plant over time and disrupts the efforts to make the plant more optimized to increase production capacity as performance over time cannot be measured.
For a multi-pronged approach that is crucial for an efficacious business operation in todays’ times and to resolve these complications coupled with enhanced plant efficiency and production rate and to ensure that the maximum welfare of the society is achieved; Bitsym has developed a solution for all of this, the Biteze Hydro, an all in one smart solution to reduce electricity waste and improve power quality. Biteze is a one of its kind inclusive smart solution for monitoring and record keeping of electricity parameters like current, voltage, and power etc. up to 10 electricity parameters produced at micro hydro power station are recorded, second by second, which are exhibited on a single display screen for ease of access and understanding. It has a precise and incessant electricity data logger, so that reliance on manual data entry in registers is eliminated exclusively, helping to compare and analyze the plants’ performance over a period of time via timely and easy access to the spreadsheets maintaining the data log. Its alarm module provides a timely notification based on parameters values before any kind of failure occurs, to prevent undue facility breakdowns and incurring expenses and thus enable to take timely action and precautionary measures. Where applicable internet connectivity option provides remote access at unit office to fetch live data and feed of the micro hydro power station load and consumption along with graphical representation and spreadsheets, meaning that the data can be accessed by the facility in-charge, on their mobile phones or any smart device even when they are not in the office/plant physically. Biteze Hydro is the perfect solution for all the micro hydro plants ranging from 50KW to 1000KW.
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