by Akilur Rahman, Chief Technology Officer, Hitachi ABB Power Grids in India
There is a growing need to breathe new life into India's existing power infrastructure. This has become even more crucial in the new normal that has made real-time optimization and monitoring of assets a necessity than an option.
The world, as we have known it, has changed. As we navigate through what can only be called the most pressing healthcare crisis humankind has ever known, one thing is certain, our collective consumption patterns have changed across the spectrum and irreversibly so. It has also been said that this pandemic is only the first in a series of viral outbreaks we'll be facing unless we start paying attention to the health of our planet.
It is a widely accepted fact that transitioning to nature-friendly sources of power and mobility are the most effective ways to combat climate change. Governments and policymakers across the world have begun focusing extensively on incorporating renewable power and clean transportation into our daily lives. India is no exception to this. The country is striving to produce about 500 gigawatts of renewable energy by the end of the ongoing decade and is aiming to draw 40 percent of the installed electric power capacity from non-fossil sources.
Alongside this push, visible advocacy for clean mobility is also on the rise. The government is working toward 100 percent railway electrification and increasing the penetration of electric vehicles to 30 percent by 2030 through various schemes and initiatives. To support this energy revolution, however, we will need smart technology that can withstand the rapid changes and work just as well in a socially-distanced world.
Rising population, rapid urbanization and industrialization have us relying on electricity more than ever before. Already, there is a visible effort by the government to reach isolated areas and ensure round-the-clock reliable electricity for all. However, lest this comes at the cost of the environment, we need to accelerate efforts in digitalization of the entire power value chain that allows us to raise the power efficiency, quality and reliability. We cannot transition to a future with Smart Cities by ignoring grid modernization and digitally-connected power infrastructure across sectors.
We need interactive and predictive solutions to run the modern economy; re-emptive information that a certain type of power asset should not be loaded more than a certain limit based on artificial intelligence-driven algorithms continuously analyzing data from several thousand similar assets. Machine-learning based weather and load forecasting feeds into a software that proposes the best option to transfer energy over different routes, in seconds averting possible catastrophic failures that can otherwise cost the country or a company heftily.
An industrial campus with several different operations sharing spaces and infrastructure, including office buildings, production facilities and parking lots needs to reduce its carbon footprint, maximize renewable energy and reduce its energy bill. A centralized power control and management system overseeing all distributed power assets such as solar panels and battery storage helps to optimize its energy usage, ensures campus’ energy needs are always covered, while excess energy is either stored or sold to the network.
A transport company operating in a large urban and sub-urban area wants to fully electrify its fleet to reduce its carbon footprint. It needs to power its depot, including the charging stations, have grid connection and battery storage to cover consumption peaks. The whole system can be supervised and orchestrated digitally with support of an asset management solution tracking the dispatch schedule data, traffic, etc, and predicting the optimal schedule of trucks and charge needed, as well as the cost of energy at different hours of the day. This way truck utilization is maximized while cost of energy is reduced. All this with zero emissions.
There is a growing need to breathe new life into India's existing power infrastructure. This has become even more crucial in the new normal that has made real-time optimization and monitoring of assets a necessity than an option. India could not have pulled the 9-minutes lights out feat of April 5 if we had not raised our digital profile. In the future, we will need to accelerate our use of smart solutions that provide precise real-time insights on asset health and performance, maximize the use of renewable energy while optimizing the economic return and lowering the energy bill.
Thanks to the technological advances made across energy and analytics, as well as with innovations and rising academic impetus in the world, India has the wherewithal and intelligence to execute a digital revolution for the power and utility industry. But to sustain our transition to clean energy we must systematically and significantly increase investment in high-quality power products and ensure quality renewable energy to every citizen across the Indian subcontinent.
In the coming years, India will need policies that lower pollution as well as create jobs for its growing workforce. We will require more assistance from the government vis-à-vis policy and a pledge from key power players in the industry to sustain this energy transition; this is the only way we will live up to our climate pledge. We must revisit our power and utility infrastructure and take this chance to lay the foundation for a nature-positive economy. As important as growth is, we mustn't forget that a country is only as green as the grids that power it.
