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At the inaugural session of GridWeek
Asia 2012 organized by IEEMA (Indian
Electrical & Electronics Manufacturers'
Association) and Clasma Events and colocated
at ELECRAMA-2012, Sam Pitroda,
Advisor to the Prime Minister, Government of
India and Chairman, Indian Smart Grid Task
Force, today said that the government is
planning to set up 'Smart Meter Task Force'
that will look into modernizing our primitive
ways of calculating power usage.
"It is amazing to see how India— which is
a super power in information technology—
lags terribly in the power sector. It is really
annoying to see our primitive ways of
providing power—be it evacuation, grids,
meters or even the way we manually calculate
power consumption till date. All this has to
change and it will change, for this decade has
been declared by the Government as the
'Decade of Innovation'," said Pitroda.
The Government reckons that India needs
100 million meters and towards this end, the
Smart Meter Task Force will be entrusted the
task of introducing Rs.1,000-Rs.1,500 Low
Cost Meters. "We need a 2-chip Meter that
can be connected through GSM technology.
Basically a dumb meter that is smart
enough. These low-cost meters will feed
critical data into the Smart Grids that are
considered to be the panacea for our
primitive Power Sector," Pitroda.
Pitroda said that the UPA government is
committed to democratizing information and
towards this end two major steps have
already been taken. One, the Government has
initiated a National Knowledge Centre
wherein 1,500 nodes will capture data
across sectors and feed into a central node.
Of these 750 nodes are already connected
and the balance 750 nodes will be
operational in the next 12 months. Two,
mammoth number of 250,000 Panchayats
(local governments) will be connected
through optical fibre enabling faster and
better education, health services, public
services and governance etc. "The
Government has earmarked $5-6 billion for
one-of-its-kind project in the World.
According to Pitroda the Government has
set up $1-billion venture fund to foster
'Innovation' across sectors and States. "We
have set up a National Innovation Center that
will oversee State Innovation Centers and
100 Sectoral Innovation Houses. All these
efforts beautifully tie-up into the Smart
Grids. Today I personally think that power is
our biggest bottleneck for 8 per cent GDP
growth. It is a larger challenge that many of
us don't realize considering that Power has
to reach to the bottom of the pyramid and
that too cheap power. Only Smart Grids—
that too India specific model of Smart
Grids—can solve our problems. The
Western model is not scalable, affordable
and workable."
ELECRAMA hosted the maiden GridWeek
Asia which is an extension of the annual
GridWeek conference held in Washington,
DC, USA. The Smart Grid potential in Asia —
a rapidly growing market—is expected to
reach $22 billion by 2020.
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