S.B. Chandrashekharaiah has close to three decades of experience in the power sector. During this time, he has work ed on automation, SCADA systems, and power system communications. He has been working with Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) since 1991 and is currently superintendent engineer-SCADA at the SLDC, KPTCL.
On the current state of the sector, Chandrashekharaiah says, “Many changes have taken place over the past few years, the biggest being the growing penetration of renewable energy generation. Moreover, the country has moved from electricity shortage towards surplus.” He believes the next big change will be the growth of distribution automation and technologies such as IoT and use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Further, microgrids and solar rooftop are expected to scale up significantly. According to him, the biggest challenges facing the sector are implementing proper communication technologies for automation and extending quality power to consumers.
Chandrashekharaiah is immensely proud of his organisation and lists some of its big achievements as such: “We have implemented SCADA across the entire network, along the length and breadth of the state, up to the 11 kV feeder level. We have achieved a high level of automation with respect to transmission and even sub-transmission.” Some of the planned initiatives of the company are the implementation of automatic generation control, improvement in infrastructure for load shifting, expansion of the transmission network, and addition of new transformers to strengthen the state transmission sytem.
Chandrashekharaiah’s most memorable assignments include the responsibility for renovating one of the oldest and biggest substations in the state, and the renovation and modernisation of one of the biggest SCADA networks in the country. “I have been a part of the design, execution and maintenance teams. Not one day has been monotonous in my career, which makes me happy as a professional.” In terms of management style, he believes that everybody should own their work and complete it within the timeline. Chandrashekharaiah studied electrical and electronics engineering at Mysore University and later taught at the Siddaganga Institute of Technology in Karnataka. He considers M. Visvesvaraya and Mahatma Gandhi as his role models and his mantra is “living a simple life”. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and farming.