It is high time that India adopts technology and unified metering to bring down the loss rate. It is found that power distribution has the most pressing need for transformation and it has the highest return of investment RoI for technology.
 
However, there is a huge disparity across DISCOMs in maturity of technology adoption. Technology has to be applied in harmony with social, political and economic context specific to the DISCOM. IT, communication and automation/control must be planned and implemented in synergy to achieve optimal results.
 
But major complexities are in terms of economic and business issues, such as energy efficiency, tariff structure and complex pricing, consumer involvement and choice in transparency and quality of service and climate change as of clean energy sources, distributed generation and bi-directional flow.

The road ahead
"It is to be noted that technology alone cannot address all these issues. However, digital technology can serve as a catalyst to transform the power sector in India," the minister added.
 
Recently the Ministry of Power has entered into two other initiatives with regard to the distribution sector and has earmarked an investment of Rs 51,000 crore for APDRD of which Rs 10,000 crores is for the IT sector.
 
The ministry is working along with TCS that has developed world's fastest supercomputer at Pune. This will speeden up the computing works at BHEL, NTPC. TCS, along with NTPC, HTPC, has launched India's third power trading exchange recently.
 
"Each distributor must develop its own technology adoption roadmap depending on its priorities and current business and technology maturity level. For this trajectory to be realised, interoperability among systems is critical, similar to the practice in mobile communications, banking and other networked industries. A national level standard covering all these aspects have to be established to ensure the success of this transformation. Moreover, a distribution technology trajectory (DTT) is the way ahead. However, this needs a huge investment," Nilekani added.
 
It is high time that India adopts technology and unified metering to bring down the loss rate. It is found that power distribution has the most pressing need for transformation and it has the highest return of investment RoI for technology.
 
However, there is a huge disparity across DISCOMs in maturity of technology adoption. Technology has to be applied in harmony with social, political and economic context specific to the DISCOM. IT, communication and automation/control must be planned and implemented in synergy to achieve optimal results.
 
But major complexities are in terms of economic and business issues, such as energy efficiency, tariff structure and complex pricing, consumer involvement and choice in transparency and quality of service and climate change as of clean energy sources, distributed generation and bi-directional flow.