#grampower

It’s been more than a year since I blogged last - its tough to keep blogging discipline - I must admit. So here I am, back with experiences, which will make up for the missed blogging time.

I’d like to write today about the kind of futuristic, frugal & bold experiments happening in the technology hotbeds of India, some of which I was a part of, others, may be in future.

First, about smart meters developed for India - 'Energy access' was the primary topic around which the years 2013-2014-2015 of my life were spent. Gram Power scaled to more than double operating size in FY 14-15 as compared to the previous year. More than anything which was achieved in technology progress and number of villages electrified, it did introduce fresh thinking amongst the topmost energy policy makers of India. GP’s smart meters with seamless payment integrations are sure to change quickly changing the lives of the first time users of electricity & lives of people residing in remote grid connected areas too. These meters are extremely frugal in design and are tested in some of the worst geographies suited to deploy energy meters. The electricity distribution companies providing energy to the rural customers are going to reap rich benefits incorporating GP’s technology into their operations. Electricity is secretly becoming simpler, for all of us.

One more experience I can share is of the time when I fortuitously landed on the 23rd floor of Westin, Mumbai to stay there for a week in July - with awe inspiring view of north & west Mumbai. There are quite a few rooftops which had deployed solar PV or solar water heater. I was elated, momentarily. Momentarily because, a vast majority of them are still without a solar array. I was uncomfortable at the sight of those naked rooftops, I started thinking why can’t someone just provide them with a thick linen of a solar arrays? Its blatantly, vulgar to my eye - to have a rooftop not covered with solar array. There are obvious environmental advantages added to which, there are financial benefits to the private power distribution companies providing power to Mumbai. This observation lets us to the Axiom #1 for rooftop solar - “Any rooftop which is not covered with solar array, is publicly naked and hence vulgar. One must in all attempts provide them with cover of thick solar blanket!” If you stay either in Mumbai, Delhi, Banglore, Kolkata, Chennai or some of the state capitals, you’ll not know the extent of such vulgarity; but travel hinterlands - you’ll very well realise why I’m calling naked rooftops - ‘vulgar’. Rural and peri-urban parts of India, including the burgeoning city of Gurgaon is facing high amounts of power deficits. There are reasons to ponder about that. But don't worry, this is soon to change - especially when Mr. Modi has upped India's solar target to 100 GW by 2022 - its a moonshot given current deployments of over 4 GW. Oorjan Cleantech founded by Roli Gupta is a bold attempt for achieving fast paced solar rooftop deployments in India. They are building some amazing products to facilitate rapid deployments of solar in India. I am lucky to have been associated with them since its inception - have had some super exciting discussions with Roli since I moved to Mumbai early in May.  

The third and the most exciting developments, is the fresh & futuristic attempt at designing electric vehicles for India, this will definitely capture the imagination of many technology enthusiasts especially since Tesla has made it big in the US, Europe & now China. I’m awed by the bold attempts of Elon Musk. The States aside, EVs in India have travelled a long way since REVA was launched by Chetan Maini in 1994. He is a man of superb vision, but for a bunch of reasons the product did not find a resounding acceptability. Technology has dramatically developed since then, the most important of all is the drop in Lithium based battery prices! There is renewed confidence in Indian hardware capabilities and fresh thought to solutions catering to Indian conditions, next generation bikes are soon to make way into the Indian roads. These bikes come loaded with a lot more than a neat battery pack - they come with Android-like OS, which is a huge leap in connected devices paradigm. The bike will be able to tell you directions, parking spots, charging stations and all popular destinations once you hit the roads. In case when you just want to go out and are not sure where to go - this bike will soon be able to tell you a place suited to your taste - you just need to hit the road with it. I recently visited Ather Energy, the company building these smart electric vehicles in Bangalore - met Tarun, Swapnil & their team - I was pleasantly surprised to see a large team working in full swing to launch smart e-bikes on Indian roads. Tarun's vision and enthusiasm was infectious as we discussed the future of EVs over lunch. I'm confident that the team will meet with resounding success in years to come.

Fourth observation - pertaining to energy efficiency, is my friends’ Kunal, Ravi & Shatruddha’s SwitchKit. They’re building a connected platform for energy management, which integrates with a host of communication systems, found very widely in urban & peri-urban households across the world. They’ve started off with integration of lighting products onto this platform and are soon to expand to other appliances. If alternate generation is one end of the spectra in cleantech, efficiency is the other, we just can’t ignore this aspect. After all, one unit or energy saved on the consumption end equals roughly six units worth of energy saved on the generation side - all the transmission losses & generation efficiency taken into account. Estimates suggest that if we can take efficiency efforts seriously - a third of India’s energy demands of future can be negated. Which implies, that by changing current grade appliances to more efficient ones, we will not need to commission power plants amounting to 1/3 of the total estimated capacity in future. Massive savings. Experts also argue that global efforts towards efficiency should take priority over scaling up generation for the very same reason. This change is going to be hardest of all, since it requires massive participation from end users of energy. It requires them to be very conscious when they buy the products they use. Hence, Switchkit and likes form an important piece in the puzzle.

To put it succinctly, it's pretty interesting how the world of computer science, web, software and general programming has benefited from the  open source community. Students of computer science learnt faster about code style, code quality and documentation directly by seeing the code and softwares designed by greats of software.

Observation #1: One of the reasons the computer science & the software industry has seen great scale is because of availability of young skilled human resources in a very short time. This skilled human resource owes a great deal of their learning to the open source community, they got better and smarter at writing code building on the code written by experts and learning from the code written by them. (Thanks Anay for making me realize this!)

  I'll ask you to hold your thoughts on computer science for a bit and take you to the world of energy access and micro-grids!   I have been working with Gram Power since more than 7 months now, we're primarily into the designing and making smart energy meters, but the core innovation of the company lies in the way these smart meters are used. In places where there is no energy access (the remote rural areas) we commission solar micro grids, to each of our consumers we provide these smart meters (with pre-paid payment facility) where the villagers can purchase power like they purchase mobile talk-time or daily stock of onions or potatoes. Rs. 5 a day, or 10 a day or 20 a day. This brings a whole new meaning to operational sustainability of these micro grids. The costs of operation and maintenance of the physical infrastructure is taken care of by these small payments.  Brilliant idea! The key challenge which confronts us and the world now is how to use this idea to solve the problem of energy access in the whole world? Or atleast rest of India?    The sheer magnitude of the problem is so huge, in India, globally that one Gram Power or any one company or even 10's of companies put together will not be able to solve it in the next 5 years.But we need to solve it in the next 5 years, and we need to solve it soon. How can we be indifferent with a huge portion of our population having no access to power since the invention of power? Electricity means a century worth of progress from them.   So we need more companies commissioning micro grids, more people thinking about energy access not only because the magnitude of problem is huge, but also because it takes a lot of capital and nuanced understanding of the community in order to operate the microgrid successfully.    Here's where my imagination comes into play - how about we have 100's of  entrepreneurs/ leaders throughout the country who can erect and operate microgrids, (notice: I am talking about micro grids, not smart micro grids) because its easier to learn how to commission micro grids, we (Gram Power) can help them make smart.  

So the big idea is to open source micro grids, a platform by the people already thinking about and doing things to solve the energy access problem through micro grids to educate and inspire 100's more. A direct analogy from my Observation #1. It will be a one-stop-shop for anyone who wants to do it acquire the skills and know-how on how to do it. Things like what kind of entity to form? What kind of support to get? How to build an initial small team? Most importantly how to technically design the plant? Find the right suppliers? Test the supplies? here's the Biggie - how to raise funds?  how to execute the project flawlessly? and operate it afterwards!

  That's it, that's the idea -

open source micro grids to give rise to a lot more entrepreneurs and leaders - scale up the idea. I think with this shared knowledge and focused goals the problem of energy access is soon to be gone.