Simplifying power and metering with technology

We need to understand sociology of technology, and technologists in India must provide that comfort and that functionality to consumers.

World’s first smart electricity metre was launched in 1988. Smart technologies in the electrical industry existed even in the 1988. The “Smart” trend existed decades back, and that technology is still smart and is being upgraded with time and all the other essentials. Today, we must decide that if a technology is getting old, it’s on us whether to talk about the prophecy profess it further or we talk about the prognostication. We must actually keep it simple and easy. Metering is a wonderful concept. In fact, India was among the first two countries to install mart electronic electricity meters. Almost 70 percent of the total smart technologies are designed either in Bangaluru or Hyderabad or Chennai. All the major primary companies have their design engineers in India. With this level of technical knowledge we should be able to create wonders. The question is, how do we achieve it? Talking about it, Bhagwat Singh Babel, Non-Executive Director, Secure Meters, RR Kabel – Mumbai, Kryfs Power Mumbai Udaipur Urja and Past President – IEEMA, says “When I look around my own premises, I want it to be sustainable, energy efficient and carbon negative. I have a solar installed in my rooftop, I have a net metering system for my energy consumption and I recycle almost every possible thing we use in our day to day life. I am associated with Udaipur Urja, where we reduce carbon footprints and we received investments of $2 million, and this money was credited to us as carbon credits. Those of you who may not be aware carbon rates in Europe today costs 30 Euros a tonne, whereas, earlier it was 5 Euros per tonne, in India we can do it at a affordable and cheap cost. So we need to apply our mind as to what is it we want to do with our consumption and how efficiently can we reduce it.

But when we want all our applications to be smart and connected and managed from a single location, do we realise the amount of information we generate calculate the data to be used in my own premises. When we launched our first electronic metre, I have been in a dialogue with Tata and some of the other utilities, where I’ve dealt with about five 600 utilities around the world. We were able to collect ample of data on that note which can be utilised efficiently in the near future to have a net metering system to track the consumption.

Energy is basically the power multiply, with additional imperative measures to amplify it effectively. And to measure the power and the data, we must use measured fundamental quantities like voltage, current, time, frequency, added speed, computing power. These fundamentals have become phenomenal over the years. When we started smart metres, we use bit processor and smart algorithms to compute various things. Now you get extremely smart computing a very low power, with which we can perform phenomenally work. So you need sensing all requirements towards energy computing. Firstly, we need these basic sensors then can add temperature humidity, Comfort Control as per our requirement and convenience more effectively. We can choose, what do we compute, how we will do it and where will the data and the information should be placed; so we need to understand sociology of technology. We as technologists must provide that comfort and that functionality to people.

Maintaining quality hardware is another major issue. Technology can be a vital element in maintaining the equipment and the hardware. We in India have a tremendous capability with probability to improve our hardware capabilities. In terms of software and firmware and other stuff we are already doing well for the rest of the world. We need to keep improvising our hardware. So those are the opportunities that are talked about. You keep things simple, and that allows you to ensure that your electronics works in Indian conditions, as our surge levels extremely high. If you look at Indian standard and IEC standards, they talk about energy surge of a few jewels or copper jewels or something and you get surges are much higher. Temperatures are much high, frequency varies our voltage varies; so we got to design our products which are suitable for Indian conditions. For instance, when you’re doing wires, you can’t take current reading for normal conditions because our voltages vary you steel, and we tend to overload stuff. So those kind of things need to be done. And I believe, you know, double standards.

We need standardisation and interoperability. When you design a computer and a printer, you didn’t standardise the common protocol, but you give a driver so that a computer can perform requested actions to the system. Why can’t we have a simplified model for power and metering? You don’t need to lock people into one particular kind of protocol, or one kind of technology, you need interoperability with possible innovations. We should be able to use our devices, or integrate and get into that kind of communication with devices. So let’s think about those kinds of solutions. And together, industry forums should work on that and try and make interoperability, operable systems which are useful and produce such technologies for rest of the world. And when we did that, in metering, we sold our products to 70 odd countries successfully; a lot of those international customers are single source of Indian pearls. So it’s quite possible that we do it. So it’s possible we can produce high quality high standard products and systems. So let’s do it together. And there is tremendous scope, both for green energy and saving devices, and together we can definitely do it.

Now that we are talking about smart cities and smart grid, it’s vital to consider the cyber security risks towards deployment of smart cities. Holistic approach towards security demands at the metering end must be ensured as evading the security outlook of smart meters may result into unending disaster. These security keys will be encrypted through Key Management Systems which are especially designed to meet the smart energy protocols across various industries and across various platforms

Not to forget a recent report by EESL, implementation of smart cities across the country showed that the states with smart meters has experienced effective results with an average of around 25 percent in their billing. Smart meters can record the energy consumption data at an interval of 15 minutes or on hourly basis. Precisely, smart meters won’t just help the DISCOMs in generating additional revenue, but it will allow the consumers to regulate their consumption to save their expenditure.
Smart meters are beneficial for the distribution company and the consumers. It’s more about being digitally sound and concrete. Since they can play a significant role in transforming the power sector by providing them controlled power solutions, the system should come forward to acknowledge and adopt the same. Consumers will take time to adopt the smart meters, as DISCOMs will have to advanced systems to maintain the data management ad technologies to address the interoperability issues with the power systems.