Smart power demands green energy, energy security, and better infrastructure

The Indian electricity sector is growing exponentially, changing and revitalising the country’s power generation, transmission, and distribution sectors. With new automation, digitalisation, and decarbonisation, we are witnessing significant transformations in our power sector infrastructure. Also, power infrastructure companies are adopting AI, machine learning, and data analytics to create an innovative, intelligent, and the reliable electrical grid.
Analysing this consistent growth, the industry further demands investments in intelligent products, technologies, energy storage, battery technologies, and energy management to have innovative power, cyber security, and electric vehicles, among others.
Utilities
Digital substations and modern power equipment can reduce copper infusion into a system, increasing the reliability of an efficient power supply. There are a lot of utility companies that are working on developing indigenous products that complement substations well. H. C. Sharma, Chief of Business Development, Contracts, Stores & Technical Services, Tata Power-DDL., says, “When we talk about increasing operational efficiencies, automation and allied technologies come into the picture—whether for operations, maintenance, or engaging a skilled workforce. Digitalisation and digital tools help identify and detect faults in a power substation right from the outset of the fault occurrence and notify us in advance so that preventive measures can be taken. Thus, digitalisation and automation are two of the power sector’s most critical yet essential aspects. Furthermore, we see widespread acceptance of the same in the Indian power sector, with utilities taking all possible steps to implement it and making room for automation, digitalisation, and other allied technologies to improve overall output.
While pointing out challenges, Prashanth, Manager, Product Development, Manav Energy, says, “One of the challenges being faced is maintaining and modernising erstwhile assets, which are ageing and not well equipped to meet the demands of a changing industry.” Yet another area where much focus is needed is digital transformation through sensor-based data capture and artificial intelligence(AI). AI-based management would help in the predictive maintenance of these assets, thus helping with (a) cutting energy waste, lowering energy costs, and increasing the use of clean, renewable energy sources in power grids.
At the same time, “the new dimension connecting intelligent grids, smart buildings, and prosumers is creating new economic opportunities and increasing sustainability. There used to be a distinct divide between the supply and demand sides of things, with smart objects on the supply side and buildings and industries on the demand side. However, this divide has weakened over time, and there is now something known as the “grid edge,” where many new applications are sprouting. New software solutions and equipment components are appearing at the grid edge, and
distributed energy is becoming increasingly popular, quips Vikram Gandotra, Member NEC, Chairperson Public Policy Committee, IEEMA, and Chairperson WUS.”
Transmission/Grid Infrastructure
In the last seven decades, our grid has been built brick by brick and has grown manifold. Today we have more than 650+ generating plants of multiple fuel types connected with >460000 Ckm of transmission lines at 200kv level and above, including 20+ world-class HVDC installations to feed a 1.4 billion population under 80+ DISCOMs. Talking about the various innovations taking place in grid safety, Dhavaleshwar Puvvati, Product Manager, Product Engineering, says, “The cyber fortification of strategic infrastructure is a much sought, debated, and needed aspect today. Especially with the news of our neighbour pulling strings on our grid safety, we already have the policymakers and national agencies working hand-in-hand for grid safety from design to deployment to operations by closely working with OEMs and operating bodies.”
Whereas stating the importance of energy storage, Shantanu Srivastava, Energy Finance Analyst, IEEFA, says, “storage is necessary for integration to establish a grid in general. Frequency,  voltage, and black start services provide potential use cases in ancillary services. “Integrating battery storage assets into the grid at the moment or for one specific value stream, such as capacity farming, energy time shifting, or delivering ancillary services, is impossible.”
Amit Gupta, President of Motion Services, ABB India Ltd., says, “The main challenges in the future of the energy sector are urbanisation, population growth, and climate change, all things that are happening very quickly. These are the three important pillars moving ahead that we will look at to overcome these issues. Our primary focus should be on energy consumption and carbon reduction, energy efficiency and sufficiency.
Generation 
Today, there is increasing consumer demand for renewable energy generation, especially coming from the rooftop solar segment, says Shirish Garud, Director, Renewable Energy Technology, TERI., Currently, one is looking at advanced solar PV and wind turbines, including offshore wind turbines with better control, responding to the wind regime and gliding high-efficiency solar modules and cells, and highly sophisticated inverter inverters for the management of lead. These are the significant technologies that will impact our future generations’ future generations. Many are working on innovations. We are working on some advanced battery storage technology for supporting substation operations.

EV batteries, charging, and other infrastructure.
The manufacturing sector in the battery storage business has a tremendous opportunity. Telecom towers, distributed rooftop solar and storage integration, data centres, diesel generator offsets, and other opportunities are among the options.
Venkat Rajaraman, CEO of Cygni, says, “It will take time for lithiumion batteries to reach 100 per cent Aatma-Nirbhar, and the evolution will be gradual. Assembling the cathodes, anodes, separators, casing, and terminals into a lithiumion cell will be the first step in the primary assembly of lithium-ion cells. Additionally, the anode element itself would be manufactured or chemically processed. Due to the abundance of graphite in India, the processing of battery-grade graphite will also take place. Aluminium is similarly widely accessible. So, to rise in the value chain, we could proceed to a graphite or aluminium anode next.
“As per data provided by EV manufacturers, most EVs are sold in Tier-1 cities as people feel range anxiety while visiting tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Shwetank Jain, Founder and CEO of Belectriq Mobility, highlights the challenges and says, “There are several challenges in the expansion of EV charging infrastructures, like lack of financing, standardisation, high-speed chargers, and power  infra for public charging stations.”
Lauding the various government initiatives for EVs, Dwarakanadha Reddy, Business Head, Projects Division, Amara Raja Power Systems, says, “Under the Atmanirbhar Bharat package, the government has announced an MNRE PLI scheme for setting up manufacturing zones for critical power and renewable energy equipment. The government has also set an ambitious target of installing 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030. Currently, the public and private sectors are investing heavily in transmission networks with the concept of One Nation, One Grid, One Frequency, and One National Load Dispatch Centre resulting in one market. “Advanced Cell Chemistry (ACC) is another PLI Scheme of `18,100 crore, launched recently by GoI to encourage local domestic manufacturing for Li-Ion and other advanced battery technologies to reduce the heavy import dependency.”
Renewables
Nowadays, the entire renewable system is supported by advanced analytics and IoT. The key to solar energy is to increase energy output while minimising energy consumption. This is vital  because solar energy requires significant capital expenditures.
Vivek Pandey, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ecozen, said, “We have a lot of expertise in thermal and IoT energy storage, which we aim to use to advance the green energy sector. Since we have been in the solar market for a while, we anticipate that other businesses will also innovate.”
Commenting on the PLI scheme and BCD, Dipen Patel, Managing Partner, Head (PV Manufacturing Division), GreenBrilliance Renewable Energy LLP, says, “The government has helped the solar industry a lot by introducing the PLI scheme, which is basically for bigger manufacturers. It would be highly beneficial if the government also extended the PLI scheme for MSMEs like us.”
We appreciate the government’s decision to implement the BCD and support local producers, and we aspire to become the market leader in solar panels. The solar industry is rising to prominence on a global scale. China currently dominates the world, but India can overtake it.
There is still a lot of dependency on imports and international suppliers because we currently need the entire supply chain. There are specific difficulties in terms of cost, but we will surely overcome these challenges when the supply chain is created organically in India.