Gridspertise presents its cutting-edge sustainable solutions for the Indian power distribution grids

The energy transition and power grid modernization

The next ten years will be decisive to taking on the challenges posed by climate change and maintaining global temperatures within the limits set by the Paris Agreement. Thanks to the acceleration of decarbonization of energy production and the electrification of end uses, the path towards a net-zero emission future is becoming increasingly shorter.

As the fifth largest economy in the world and with a population of over 1.3 billion people, India’s climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions are not just transformational for the Country itself, but for the whole world.

Among its ambitious targets, India aims to meet 50% percent of its electricity requirements with renewables by 2030, reducing its economy’s emissions intensity by 45% and cutting emissions by one billion tons of CO2.1

In this scenario, distribution grids will be the main enablers for the management of a growing renewable energy generation portfolio and to guarantee the highest quality of service for the electricity supply.

However, current Indian power grid infrastructure experiences high Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses, drastically cutting utilities’ finances and limiting their ability to invest in critical infrastructure. Furthermore, low resilience to climate change events causes frequent power interruptions, impacting households and business operations, reducing sales as well as delaying the supply of goods. At the same time, the technologies currently implemented are unable to communicate problems in real time, exacerbating the situation.

For this reason, distribution networks will be a top priority for the sector, requiring huge investments for their renewal and expansion.

Smart meters: a first step in grid modernization

India plans to install 250 million smart meters in the next four years across all of its states, with the aim of reducing AT&C losses to 12-15% and cancelling the gap between the Average Cost of Supply and the Average Revenue Realized.2

Smart meters can help to stabilize the grid with granular information on consumption, allowing for real-time monitoring of electricity use, advanced management of the grid’s technical parameters and detecting in near real-time critical events, such as blackouts. They also improve billing and collection efficiency, while supporting the introduction of customized tariffs and the integration of distributed renewable energy.

Furthermore, Meter data management systems (MDMSs) help in the consolidation of data from meters, analyze data trends from readings and resolve issues of meter tampering, outages, theft, etc.

1 IEA – International Energy Agency
2 Smart Energy International

Smart meters are just the first step towards grids digitalization, enabling the increase in network resilience, efficiency and sustainability.

Gridspertise – born to accelerate the future of grids

Gridspertise, a new company fully owned by Enel, the world’s largest privately owned networks operator and a global leader in advanced digital metering with more than 20 years of expertise in the field, is ready to contribute significantly to this plan.

The NewCo offers innovative, flexible, sustainable and integrated solutions and services, in three main areas of transformation:

– Metering and grid edge digitalization: Reliable, advanced and interactive metering solutions such as smart meters, software for meter data management, low voltage grid analytics, and AMI Service to Cash.

– Network infrastructure digitalization: Smart grid solutions to enhance network resilience, efficiency, and sustainability as well as to boost the quality of service. These integrated solutions are intended for grid operations, from grid monitoring to remote control, automation, electrical flow and flexibility management of distributed resources as well as disruptive technologies such as the Quantum Edge Device.

– Field Operations Digitalization: Solutions to streamline field operations, reduce response time and increase worker safety, including the Network Digital Twin for cost-efficient vegetation management.

These solutions address the needs of DSOs through cloud and edge platform technologies and provide benefits for the entire Indian electric ecosystem:

  • For DSOs: to improve collection efficiency, reduce losses and enhance overall financial health, increasing resilience and quality of service.
  • For grid stakeholders: to facilitate the development of the energy service market, including flexibility, and electrification of end uses.
  • For end customers: to increase the reliability of electricity supply, facilitate electrification, foster energy efficiency and time-of-the-day tariffs

In the last few months, Gridspertise announced the accomplishment of thirteen agreements for more than 670,000 smart meters and over 150,000 field devices and accessories in 4 EU countries. These customers trusted the company as a strategic partner to accelerate the transformation of their networks with Metering and Grid Edge Digitalization solutions.

Meet Gridspertise at India Smart Utility Week

Gridspertise combines the agility of a startup with a distinctive expertise in the field of smart grids, making it uniquely positioned to understand DSO requirements in different regions around the world.

It offers up to date solutions, also exploring new sustainable options to remove capital barriers, with pay-as-you-save business models.

It currently operates in Italy, Spain, Brazil and Romania, aiming to reach around 30 countries by 2030. The company is looking to focus on Asia-Pacific, starting from the Indian market where investing in smart grids and the technological innovation of the infrastructure is of great importance economically and politically.

India is living through accelerated momentum for the digitalization of power systems, as policies, sustainability commitments and developing trends are going in the direction of reforming electricity distribution in the country.

Next week, Gridspertise will participate in India Smart Utility Week (ISUW) where CEO, Robert Denda, will speak about the digitalization of utilities and digitalization roadmaps at the first conference session of the event.

ISUW will introduce Gridspertise to the Indian utility market for the first time and the company is already working on new, affordable solutions and sustainable business models to support the digitalization of the country’s networks in order to boost the energy transition.

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