By Ajoy Menon, IBM India/Southeast Asia
How do we produce more clean energy? Cloud computing could be a help.
Bharat Light and Power (BLP), one of India’s largest clean energy companies, is combining cloud computing, analytics, mobile and social technologies to increase its green power capacity and transform how it operates. BLP wants to use the cloud to generate more renewable energy, improve efficiency and help rein in the growth of greenhouse gases.
In India, about 400 million residents, or nearly 100 million more than the entire population of the U.S., don’t have electricity. India has the ability to produce enough to meet those needs, but it’s just not doing it well enough, says BLP CEO Tejpreet Singh Chopra.
Cloud computing is at the heart of BLP’s move to transform how it operates. In collaboration with IBM and using our SoftLayer technology as a base, BLP built a cloud infrastructure that helps better manage and monitor its vast and growing fleet of wind farms scattered across the country. This infrastructure also lets BLP store, manage, and use the immense amounts of data produced by its power generation sources.
Next, the company will roll out analytics technologies to pull insights out of this torrent of big data to increase operational efficiency and production capacity and expand business. For instance, BLP will be able to proactively identify defective equipment and the causes of capacity utilization problems. Using mobile technology, the company will be able to provide information, analyzed on the cloud, to its ground staff on their handsets, alerting them before problems pop up and suggesting ways to correct issues.
Over time, BLP also plans to use mobile and social technology to connect with customers through the cloud. That way, it can inform them about their power usage, determine energy demand and improve energy distribution its its wind farms.
The situation in India is textbook for the issues that developing and developed countries face. India’s energy infrastructure is highly strained, while energy needs are rising. To sustain its growth trajectory, India needs to meet its energy demands in an environmentally sustainable manner.
To meet these challenges, utilities are exploring a range of advanced technologies, such as energy storage and smart grid so they can better integrate renewable energy into the grid. They’re working to pull more data out of their networks and knit different systems together. Cloud computing provides the fastest, most efficient delivery of IT resources for integration without the need for a lot of start-up or capital costs.
In the process, BLP is mapping out a playbook that other energy producers can follow. Because we need a host of innovative approaches to meet the rising demand for energy from companies and communities around the world. Just as the cloud is ushering in more reliability, efficiency, and innovation at other organizations, it’s helping change how utilities are run.
To learn more, visit ibm.com/cloud or join the conversation at #ibmcloud
Ajoy Menon is Director of Strategic Outsourcing of Global Technology Services, IBM India/Southeast Asia.
