As the industry focus gradually
shifts towards renewable energy
generation and improved energy
efficiency, Digi expects to play a major
role in this transformation of the Indian
power industry. Digi's two exclusive
solutions—X-grid and renewable
energy solution—provide smart
automation data aggregating service,
providing end-to-end communication
solutions. In an interaction with
Electrical Monitor, Pradeep Nair, Director
Sales, Digi, mentioned that energy is
one of the focus areas of the company
for leveraging further growth. He
mentioned that Digi has identified India
as one of the top markets globally. The
company's investment in India would
always be high and energy would be its
top area of focus.
The Extended Grid solution offered
by Digi provides a platform where the
end users of utility resources can be
actively engaged with the utility
producers to conserve energy, save
money and maximize the ROI for a
Smart Grid investment. The solution
offers real-time access to precise energy
usage information, real-time control of
energy consuming devices, an ability to
support all these devices once they are
installed, an ability to quickly deploy a
pilot and scale to millions of users an
ability to accomplish all of this without
impacting the operational performance
of the utility's AMR or AMI network,
near real-time energy management and
remote control of smart energy
thermostats and other devices.
Regarding deployment of smart
meters, Nair stated that several utilities
have begun to show interest in smart
meter application and Digi has deployed
huge quantity of smart meters deployed
in West India.
Digi solution in renewable energy
help companies offer simple tools to
their customers, promoting effective
management and monitoring of solar
and wind energy assets. Digi offers endto-
end, fully customizable wireless
hardware, a software platform and
services that can be used to create and
deploy secure, scalable and flexible
monitoring solutions quickly.
Speaking to Electrical Monitor, Ben
Tucker, Senior Sales Engineer, Digi
International, stated that in
renewable energy one has to track
variables such as capacity, voltage
levels, faults and metering. The assets
too are widely distributed. Digi helps
to build a flexible architecture to bring
communication from all these units
together. Digi has flexible and reliable
technology and the solutions offered
can be quickly deployed.
He further stated that market in India
is moving at a very fast rate and is slowly
expected to catch up and even overtake
the other existing markets of the world.
Energy efficiency is an absolute
requirement here today. He mentioned
that the company has had initial
successes in the markets here and there
is currently a great deal of interest in the
products by Indian customers.
Informing about the growth model
followed in India, Nair informed that the
company seeks to follow partner route
by partnering with its existing
distributors and establishing new ones.
He further stated that to develop further
business and maintain existing ones the
company has actively been
communicating with end-customers. He
mentioned that the company's strong
points are reliability and the ability to go
first in the market with its kind of
solutions. Even though India remains a
price conscious market, customers are
willing to go for higher prices for
reliability. The company has a strong
post sales technical support and an
engineering group based in the country,
to customize the solutions based on the
local market needs, he asserted.
Though Digi products and solutions
have been available in India since past
few years through its distribution
network, the company marked its local
presence with acquisition of Mobiapps
in June 2009. The company does not
have any plans for further acquisitions
at present, however, the officials did not
rule out such a possibility in future.