Hari Balasubramanian | Business Development Director – Middle East & India | Janitza electronics GmbH
India consumes more than 1500 trillion units of electrical energy. Considering the losses in transmission and distribution amounts to roughly 20%+ which is more than the world average. In industries, the unaccounted energy losses are significant and vary from different industrial segments. In Janitza electronics, we believe in “If you can’t measure it, You can’t improve it”
Let me narrate a small story on one of the existing situations
Managing director to works manager: How much energy do we use?
Works manager: Not entirely sure, indeed a lot
Managing director: Be sure to change that
Works manager to Engineer: We need to reduce our energy costs. Take care of it.
One year later.
Managing director to works manager: The energy bills are as high as ever. How is that possible?
Works Manager: I need to ask an Engineer.
Works manager to Engineer: We are still paying crazy energy bills. How is that possible? I told you that you needed to sort that out!
Engineer: Yes, boss. We cannot find the consumption pattern for our loads as we do not have enough metering and you know with our daily work schedule, we can’t collect meter readings from existing meters either as per schedule.
Any energy management deals with increasing efficiency and losses are accounted for. If there is no energy transparency, we cannot reduce waste at every network level, starting from generation to distribution and for industries from incoming to last-mile energy usage. Energy users need to account for every single unit of energy they receive and use efficiently.
Standards like ISO50001 provide a methodology to Industries and facilities for efficient energy management. Adapting to such standards will provide ample opportunities to consumers to manage by the Plan-Do-Check-Act system. Countries like Germany have a regulation to be certified for ISO50001 if the consumer consumes more than 1GwH of energy annually. In India, too, we should have regulations tuned to our Industrial consumers and adhered meticulously. All organisations related to Energy efficiency, regulators and industrial associations shall work together to form stringent norms. Thereby wastage of energy is vastly curtailed if not eliminated. Energy management and waste reductions should be a revolutionary movement in India.
I believe that India has ample opportunities to reduce energy wastage by following the benchmark transparently for every industry on specific unit consumption. Every industry segment should have Energy Performance Indicators as benchmarks, and the industry should actively participate in such continuous exercise. The consumers that are below the bar should be guided appropriately to improve on and achieve better results.
If India reduces wastage, our competitiveness increases, thereby our sustainable future. If we implement energy transparency, stories like the above will not happen.
