A sea of opportunities for power and electrical sector amidst lockdown

Industry leaders are positive about finding and creating opportunities amidst the current lockdown that has been imposed due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the country. The power sector also plans to make use of every opportunity and work towards optimised utilisation of available resources.

Access to digital platforms addressing muted power demand
With Central and State governments issuing directives for closure of all non-essential workplaces, i.e., offices, commercial establishments, and industrial units except units serving the essential services, the demand for electricity from such consumers has reduced over the past fortnight. The demand today is due to household consumption, critical healthcare facilities, municipal services in cities and towns, cold storage and warehousing services, etc. — areas that are critical for providing seamless essential services to all the people of the country.

Though reduction in commercial and industrial demand has reflected in the reduced power demand, power supply has continued to be available as central sector generators, state-owned power plants, and IPPs are available and RE generators have been given a must-run status. Therefore, with lower demand and continued supply, the prices in the market have certainly come down significantly. In the prevailing scenario, distribution companies can meet their power purchase requirement on a daily/weekly basis by accessing PXIL’s trading platform to provide 24/7 supply to their consumers during this critical juncture, including supply to critical healthcare facilities, disaster management, telecom and internet services, banks, cold storage and warehousing services, public utilities like water, sewerage, street lighting, etc.

PXIL provides a web-based trading platform to all its customers for trading in electricity on 24/7 basis on all days of the year. We would also like to mention that even during this period of lockdown, in addition to transactions for physical trade of electricity, entities across the country have participated to a large extent in the REC segment to fulfil their Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPOs). While the demand was certainly muted, companies across the country still participated using PXIL’s 24/7 web-enabled platform from various locations.

Prabhajit Kumar Sarkar, MD& CEO, Power Exchange India Limited (PXIL)

Investments in IoT to boost Indian smart lighting business
The onset of COVID-19 has brought about a shift in the way most businesses function today. Due to the lockdown, there has been a substantial loss in production of the hardware segment for smart lighting. The public lighting scenario is facing major revenue drops since outdoor applications have been limited over the past couple of months. Moreover, manufacturing units haven’t been operating at their prime time, which has also resulted in loss of production. Liquidity crunch also added more problems to the manufacturing industry. However, people are bound to invest in IoTenabled devices/appliances to avoid more manpower-intensive operations, which will in turn boost IoT-enabled smart lighting in India. Most of the street light poles will transform into smart poles to do better surveillance and display public awareness messages/alerts in cities and towns to provide better living standards.

Udaya Bhaskar Rao, CEO & MD, iRAM Technologies

EV manufacturers optimistic about regaining market confidence

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While the extension in the nationwide lockdown was necessary and expected, this elongated lockdown should be used by the government to plan for the exit plan. EV vehicle owners, due to this extension, would have to arrange the charge and discharge of their cars at location, and expect service issues only post lockdown. This goes for petrol and diesel vehicles as well for their lead acid starter batteries. As an industry, the EV segment has been less impacted since the large-scale adoption was yet to happen as compared to the traditional auto industry. However, the demand derivative for EVs is linked to overall auto demand which has been and will continue to be impacted, pushing the EV business investments plans out by months. But as an internal optimist, this extended lockdown could also mean that traditional auto may look towards EV as the reset plan.

Maxson Lewis, Managing Director, Magenta Power

Payment defaults to impact demand and supply chain across power sector
Over the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented global economic and social crisis. The pandemic has significantly affected all aspects of life, including the energy sector. Globally, companies have ceased or decreased capital expenditures where possible, and the energy sector is no exception. COVID-19 is having an especially negative impact on the renewable energy sector. One of the main problems relates to the delivery of equipment to power plants. Defaults on payments cause a cascade effect and impact the whole sector. The whole range of consequences for the energy sector is yet to be revealed post lockdown and is difficult to predict; however, it is already clear that demand for energy resources has dropped, prices have plummeted, and non-payment of utility bills by end consumers will have a detrimental effect along the supply chain. Domestic module manufacturers are foreseeing demand ahead, but it is a little unjust to say the exact time period.

Yash Jain, Chief Marketing Officer, MicroSun Solar Tech Pvt Ltd

Solar PV business needs to strategise and harness opportunities amid crisis
A majority of the commercial and industrial rooftop solar PV market might witness sluggish growth, possibly for two quarters, as businesses scramble to get their core operations back on track including funding re-allocations away from planned solar projects. Outliers to this can be big groups with deep pockets who might take a strategic leap. On utility scale, largest IPPs have their project pipeline in place; however, it is inevitable for them to escape the supply chain constraints and they are working aggressively on reconnecting a lot of dots (safely from home). This presents a very important opportunity for our domestic industry players across the entire value chain of solar PV systems to strategise and make the best out of this situation

Gurpreet Singh Walia, Vice President, Gensol Group of Companies

Need to provide uninterrupted power solutions for essential services
The lockdown has forced the industries to rethink on expansion plans to review the short-term and medium-term impact caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic. At this time, while most customers in India are continuing with their project plans for alreadystarted projects, we are also receiving feedback that many customers are delaying new projects to evaluate the impact of the lockdown on their business. We continue to work closely with our customers to support the needs of all essential industries, primarily from healthcare, pharma, BFSI, IT/ITES, telecom, and data centres respectively. All these sectors are very crucial and especially healthcare and BFSI have been enlisted as essential services; hence, we have seen more requests coming in to provide our uninterrupted power solutions systems and support the businesses during this critical hour. We are confident of the long-term potential in the Indian market and expect the market to rebound by January 2021 from the current state where many industry segments are not working at a normal scale of operation.

Sriram Ramakrishnan, MD, Fuji Electric India and Fuji Electric Consul Neowatt