SYED SAJJADH ALI
The COVID-19 has brought unprecedented challenges for economies around the world and has an unforeseen impact on global businesses at large. Companies worldwide are dealing with varying concerns such as stress on working capital, supply chain disruption, and forced realignment of investments and projects. As the economy returns on the growth path, India’s power consumption will rise, aided by the 100% household electrification and revival in industrial activities. It also paved way for some interesting trends like:
Growth of renewable energy
India will lead the Renewable Energy Upswing in 2021. Looking back, however, 2020 proved to be a decisive year for clean energy in India. Bids for new solar projects hit record highs last year, affirming that coal is no longer the cheapest source of electricity. The country awarded landmark supply contracts for flexible renewable power, an important step in addressing the limitations of intermittent wind and solar. Stimulus measures for utilities, an extension to project commissioning deadlines, and domestic solar manufacturing initiatives also helped to bolster the outlook for renewables.
Tech innovation and increasing adoption of automation
Automation and digitization are rapidly transforming industries, including the power sector owing to the growing concern about enhancing plant performance through dependable and predictable operations.
In the power sector, the Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing uniformity across devices and equipment. Interoperability and data readability is the key solutions with the advent of IoT. With the emergence of Cloud-based automation solutions, power companies have been beneficiaries of the reduction in costs, functionality enhancement, and greater flexibility. In 2021 and subsequently, the tremendous growth and demand in enterprise cloud computing (private, public, and hybrid) will continue acting as the main driver in the DC industry.
Everything as a Grid
Increasing automation, digital sensing, and automated analytics-based solutions will enable the move towards a more efficient, reliable, resilient, and responsive grid. Similarly, to improve operational efficiency and ensure effective network planning, distribution companies are also undertaking several digitization and grid modernization initiatives. Here are three ways in which we can implement a grid for maximum efficiency:
- Commercial buildings can integrate with the Grid for optimum utilization
- Plants can utilize Microgrids
- Datacenters can monetize their under-utilized asset for example extra capacity of the UPS solutions which can double up as energy storage
The mass introduction of electric transportation infrastructure
As the average cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen drastically on a mixture of manufacturing economies of scale and technology improvements, companies and consumers alike are increasingly turning to electrification for power transportation, making the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) one of the largest potential areas for electrification. It is expected that the global EV adoption rate could reach 10%-12.5% by 2025.
Introduction of new generation energy-efficient solution
The year 2020 saw the birth of a new vision – Vocal for Local. Today many companies are focusing on building the base business through increased localizations. However, we should also focus on introducing products contributing to the identified megatrends energy transition and digitalization via:
- EV Fuses, Solar Fuses, SF6 free MV
- Redesigned RMU’s
- Focus on Localization of Switchgear products
With the declining impact of COVID-19 and higher visibility of vaccine availability, 2021 promises to be an exciting year for the power sector, particularly as India is poised at the cusp of tremendous growth in the power sector with rising energy investments.
