By Greentech Lead Team: Mindteck, a product engineering company, offers a
comprehensive suite of smart energy services that deliver sustainable energy
efficiency solutions to optimize energy consumption and facilitate distributed
energy generation via implementation of smart grid technologies.
Mindteck’s Smart Energy services are designed to support
semiconductor companies, home and building automation OEMs and system
integrators, utilities, independent service operators, and commercial and
institutional (C&I) energy consumers.
Mindteck’s Smart Energy vertical is committed to providing
smart grid technology services and solutions to deal with energy challenges
such as optimizing energy consumption, improving energy efficiency and
integrating distributed generation. Renewable energy such as PV(Solar), Wind,
Biogas generated by end consumers could be fed into the grid — aggregate sum of
which would be huge.
Surjit Lahiri, practice head, Energy, Semiconductor
Manufacturing and Storage Verticals, shares inputs on the growing trend of
Smart grid technology that Mindteck provides to support smart energy
consumption in the country and world over.
The interaction follows:
GreenTech Lead: What
are the opportunities in smart grid market in India?
Lahiri: In
India, the demand for power is surging with shortage peaking over 15 per cent.
Many of the households are still not connected to the country’s electricity
grid. India is home to one of the weakest electric grids in the world, the
opportunities for building the Smart Grid are great. The need is to invest in
building a modern, intelligent grid. While blanket energy efficiency is
important, India would greatly benefit from intelligent energy efficiency in
the form of demand response, grid-responsive appliances, Renewable Energy
Integration (Roof top wind/solar), Innovative Energy Storage and sub station
automation.
GreenTech Lead: What
are the opportunities for green technologies in India?
Lahiri: India should be aggressive on energy efficiency. The three
principles of access, efficiency and increase in the share of renewable energy
should be focused on and India can be one of the global leaders in the energy
revolution going forward in the next two decades. India with its technology
base should accelerate the development of green technologies. Otherwise, it
would just be a captive market for developed countries’ green industry and its
costly technologies. Huge opportunities await in the areas of consumer
load management and control
GreenTech Lead: Which
are the key markets for smart grid technologies globally?
Lahiri: The global smart grid market has experienced double-digit
growth rates over the last five years and is expected to continue its growth
momentum. In China, what began as an effort to supply electricity to most of
the country’s population gradually has shifted focus toward grid modernization
and efficiency. In Europe, With the EU directive requiring smart metering
technology by 2020, European utility providers are quickly assessing smart grid
and metering options. There is a demand for enhancing energy efficiency and
managing demand side management, as well as integrated renewable and variable
energy sources in U.S. and India.
GreenTech Lead: What
are your investment and expansion plans in India?
Lahiri: Mindteck’s Smart Energy vertical is committed to providing
smart grid technology services and solutions to deal with energy challenges
such as optimizing energy consumption, improving energy efficiency and
integrating distributed generation. Our smart grid services and solutions reduce
energy consumption and provide our customers with increasingly eco-friendly and
innovative solutions. Globally we work with Home/Building Automation OEMs in
creating smart appliances and sensors such as in-home displays, smart meters,
smart thermostats, smart plugs, intelligent lighting controllers, EV charging
controllers. In India we are currently focusing on rolling out Automated
Meter Reading, intelligent street lighting and data center adaptive cooling as
a managed service.
GreenTech Lead: What
are your innovative products in smart grid sector?
Lahiri: Our innovative solutions cut across devices, communication,
data and application layers of a typical solution. In devices layer
we have reference solutions for energy monitoring and load control devices
which work on low power wireless networks (sub GigaHz as well as 2.4 Ghz), on
the communication layer we have reference solutions for ZigBee and 6 LowPan
wireless technologies, in the data and application layer we have consumer
energy management and analytics application.
GreenTech Lead: Green
technologies are yet to find major acceptance in India. What are the main
reasons?
Lahiri: Although the Smart Grid in India has huge growth potential,
there are numerous challenges confronting the modernization of Grid. Currently
there are pockets in India that have surplus power, but are unable to sell to
deficient regions creating an artificial shortage scenario, Smart Grid
technologies can enable utilities demand response mechanism that can curtail
power during shortages and avoid blackouts. Efficiency levels of the coal power
plants, which together with gas supplies 65 percent of the total energy needs,
lags at 27 percent efficiency compare to western level of 37 percent
efficiency. Electric Infrastructure is not consistent across the nation, and
due to local factors, electrical monitoring is imprecise, furthermore, 50 percent of the rural area is lacking
electricity. All this results into frequent power outages, heavy losses, and
unreliability of grid. Such challenges also provide an opportunity for unique
and innovative solutions in India and also the need for an integrated
national model driving the policies and incentives.
GreenTech Lead: Is
the industry waiting for government level pro-active approach to promote green
products?
Lahiri: Not everybody is waiting. Experts are in process of
figuring out suitable projects and suitable markets without much of government
incentive — Solar lanterns cum mobile chargers is a prime example, solar water
heater is another, innovate new age companies are focusing on rural masses to
target a large market who needs and pay for energy in the right form and shape.
GreenTech Lead: What
are your main challenges in the market place?
Lahiri: Our markets are primarily In India, the main challenge we
face is packaging solutions which can be consumed by masses. Government
Incentives would be a key catalyst in augmenting the growth and adoption of
smart grid technologies.
GreenTech Lead: China
is known for dumping products (including solar products). What is your opinion?
Lahiri: From a system integrators & end customer perspective
this is better for the industry since it would lower the prices and drive up
the consumption
GreenTech Lead: What
are your Union budget expectations?
Lahiri: As mentioned earlier, we would be glad to see an integrated
national model for policies and incentives segmenting the growth of smart grid
technology.
GreenTech Lead: Who
are your main clients?
Lahiri: Our main clients are semiconductor companies, home and
building automation OEMs, utility system integrators