With the advent of digitalization, there is disruption in the traditional electricity value chain, notes Rohit Barde.
In India, power business is asset-heavy and decentralized. Being a subject in the Concurrent list (falling under both state and Central government legislature) there was always great difficulty to improve the existing system.
Traditional power sector value chain comprises of flow of power from generating company to transmission company to distribution company, and to end user. However, for planning mechanism, the flow of information is in the reverse order.
With the advent of digitalization, there is disruption in the traditional electricity value chain. IoT (Internet of thing) devices can provide real time data of end user to utility firms.
Traditional centralized generation model is changing to distributed generation. With solar rooftop consumer is becoming prosumers (a producer as well as a consumer)
With new age technologies like IoT, blockchain, etc customer data can be readily available to utility firms. Utilities can refine data and use it to provide value added services to its customers.
Areas where utility companies can venture are:
- Platform provider to prosumers for trading
- Electric vehicle charging infrastructure
- Home automation and value-added services
Also read: Sustainable EV Charging Concept From Siemens And Nexii Unveiled
1) Platform Providers to prosumers
India set an aggressive target of installation of solar rooftop to 40GW by year 2022. Consumers will be left with surplus energy after its consumption of required power. Consumers with such surplus energy will be benefitted if they can sell additional power to consumers with power deficit.
Utility firm can provide interface to those consumers as data from smart meters installed at consumers premises will be available at real time to utilities.
Also, blockchain network can execute smart contacts between prosumers without third parties in transparent way.
2) Providing electric vehicle charging infrastructure
Government of India has envisaged as ambitious target of setting up an EV charging station on every 25km to curb dependencies on imported crude oil for transportation.
Utilities firm are equipped with know-how of setting up EV charging infrastructure. New age cars are equipped with AI which can provide seamless data transfer about vehicle battery life, battery condition, service requirement etc.
With available history of vehicle data, utilities can provide customized services like location of nearest EV charging station, need to swap batteries etc to vehicle owners.
Tata power has partnered with TCS to provide EV services to various stakeholders like corporates and fleet owners.
3) Home Automation:
Home automation system monitor and/or control home attributes like lighting, air conditionings, geysers etc as per home occupier needs and its behaviour pattern.
IoT devices installed at appliance end capture data and control appliances. Controlling can be automated or can be done from remote end by user.
Data and behaviour pattern available to utilities can be used to provide customized services like auto control of air conditioners, lights etc to save electricity to homeowners.
References: (1) Smart Energy International (2) evs-charging-infrastructure-tcs-chargecore-on-hobs (3) www.tatapower.com
(About the author: Rohit P. Barde is Lead Engineer at Tata Power, Mumbai. Views expressed by the author are personal.)
