IT for synergy in Indian power sector

“IT implementation will not only just address operational issues but also address the business process,” says Prakash Nayak, Chairman – Power Engineers Panel, Institution of Engineering and Technology
 The global IT market for the power distribution sector provides a range of technologies and solutions, which address the entire business value chain in power distribution. In an interview with EPR, Prakash Nayak shares his opinion about the importance of IT in power market.
Please highlight key growth opportunities for the application of IT in the power sector.With Indian Electricity Act 2003, the complexity and challenges of the power sector have increased manifold. The act focuses on unbundling, competition and commercial motive for revival of the power sector. This makes the process of balancing the commercial objectives vis-à-vis the social concerns even more challenging. In the present business environment, utilities have to re-engineer and automate their business processes for sustainable growth and survival with objectives, such as capacity building, business process efficiency, loss reduction, metering, billing and collection efficiency, customer relations, consumer satisfaction and so forth.
In order to meet the objectives, the adoption of latest and best-in-class technology is essential. Therefore, information technology is considered as the principal thrust area to spearhead our country’s agenda of power reforms. The challenges of IT in power sector are the enormous availability of IT options in the market today. It is important not to get carried away by the technology wave, but choose the appropriate technology, as per the industry needs, more so fit in to power domain.
What are the relevant trends and activities in the market?For implementing any hardware- or software-based solutions for the enterprise, it is extremely important and critical to have a robust, scalable, adaptive and open systems computing and communication architecture. Going by the information systems lifecycle, emergence of new technologies and technical obsolescence, the data network infrastructure, around which the enterprise applications are built, survives the longest. Therefore, the network infrastructure should be built around industry standards technology, conforming to IEC.

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