ZTE Corp plans to enter in Indian Smart Grid Market

Chinese telecom major ZTE corp recently announced they will be providing range of Smart Grid solutions to address the needs of  power sector in India. It is well know fact that India has acute shortage of power, there are more than 100,000 + villages yet to be electrified, furthermore, brown-out & black-outs are common and T & D losses are high. To address this issues, Government has taken series of measures, one among them is implementation of Smart Grid technologies. Which represent huge market opportunities for both Indian as well as foreign companies. The Smart grid solution market in India is set to reach $10 billion in next 5 years.

ZTE corp is in advance negotiation with Power Grid Corporation India (PGCIL) to offer its range of Smart Grid solutions. The second largest Chinese telecom equipment maker plans to offer end-to-end smart gird solutions like smart meters, transmission networks, cloud computing solutions, video conferencing, video surveillance, along with next generation contact center, which will enhance power efficiency. "The demand for power in India is far outstripping supply and a significant percentage of power generated is lost during transmission due to which power generation & distribution companies are focusing on adopting efficiency enhancement solutions," ZTE India CEO Cui Liangjun said. The company headquartered in Shenzhen, China, has entered in partnership with system integrators and infrastructure vendors like Dongfang Electronics and TCIL to jointly offer this solution to power distribution and power generation companies.

Overview of 2011 Smart Energy India- Enabling India's Smart Grid Vision

The fourth Annual Smart Energy India Conference 2011 was held at the Lalit, Barakhamba Avenue, New Delhi. The event, organized by the Spintelligent with a theme "Enabling India's Smart Grid Vision"  attracted utilities from across the world to exhibit their solutions and intellectuals to discuss India's Smart Grid future. The Conference began with a workshop on Wind and Solar Energy led by Mr. Rahul Walawakar and Mr. Mahesh and Miss Usha Rao. They concentrated on the technologies and the challenges that we are going to face to implement smart grid in India. Apart from the technological aspects, the economical feasibility and a road map for implementation was thought as a major hurdle for the implementation of smart grid in India.

The second day started with a panel discussion amongst intellectuals from the Government Of India- Mr. Pramod Deo, Mr. Devender Singh, Shri Anil Razdan, Mr. N Murugesan chaired by Mr. Gopal Saxena. Later during the day, prominent companies like IBM , Ericssonm, Schneider Electric, Analog Devices, and SAP presented their solutions for smart grid. On the Final day, representative from Atos World Grid, National Instruments and Energie Dynamique India had very interesting panel discussion. Atos Origin launched its sub-group Atos World Grid at the conference.

Harit Soni, the co-founder of India's first Smart Grid specific startup Ecolibrium Energy, talked about the company’s pilot project at the Gujarat Secretariat. Mr. RK Goyal, Director of Tetra Tech, gave a very comprehensive view of the present smart grid infrastructure of India and also devised a roadmap for smarter grids in India. The PGCIL, one of the major utilities, gave an interesting perspective about the status of the existing transmission systems in India.

The final speech was presented by CEO of BSES Yamuna Power, Mr. Gopal Saxena. He gave different but very effective solution for India’s smart grid. The event brought smart grid companies, professionals, facilitators, government officials, academicians, intellectuals, students, and  enthusiast on one platform to discuss Smart Grid road-map for India and thus bringing it closer to realization.  

Contributed by:  Pratik Sonthalia, IIT Roorkee