Mobility solutions from Mobicule for Utilities in India

Mr. Siddharth Agarwal, Founder
& CEO, Mobicule

The global market has experienced a paradigm shift with the introduction of SMAC technologies. The letter ‘M’ which stands for 'Mobility’ has changed the opinion of undertaking business and has been dominating in the minds of technocrats, businessmen, and the investors. It does not surprise us to perceive industries shifting to mobile devices where India accounts more than 900 million subscriber base. Catching with the trend various innovative mobile apps has been developed leading to interesting business case. It is believed that mobile app download will grow exponentially and if this is the scenario, one of the biggest beneficiary of these technologies can be Indian utilities aiming to improve their efficiency and streamlining their operation through more focused customer engagement.

pManifold team recently spoke to Mr. Siddharth Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Mobicule to understand how the mobility solution is changing the landscape of Indian utility markets. The below shared are author's personal views and not to be associated with any of their company's association.

What is PQ? Whose responsibility is it?

India and most developing countries continue to struggle for 24x7 power supply, good Power Quality (PQ) environment, and Energy Efficient (EE) economy. See APQI earlier blog that tries to quantify economic impact from poor PQ environment - Are developing economies at risk due to power quality issues and challenges?

Another follow-up question will be WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING GOOD POWER QUALITY? Answer to this is usually divided and depends upon whom we pose this question. Network Operator will blame his end-customers, Device Manufacturer will blame both the Network Operator and the end-customer, and end-customer usually has not much awareness, and believe that its supply problem from Network Operator.

In addition to above 3 key stakeholders, there are others like - Designers, Commissioning Engineers and Maintenance Engineers that also plays role in sustaining good PQ environment.Commissioning Engineer play the role in ensuring the quality of installation based on certain design standards. Good installation is one of the necessities to maintain power quality during operations and to minimize voltage drop, sparking, overheating, etc. Maintenance engineers are subsequently responsible for preventing any glitches in operations which can result in power quality issue. For ex. loose connections lead to sparking;poor quality of wires results in voltage drops at customers premise, etc.

Evolving Distribution Franchisee Model across states

The Ministry of Power’s financial restructuring plan has made the introduction of private participation in distribution as one of the mandatory conditions for availing the benefits of scheme (as a result of high AT&C losses, low IT involvement and huge financial losses). Whilst State Governments’ (except Delhi and Odisha) have not undertaken privatisation of Discoms, Distribution Franchisee (DF) model has emerged as one of the attractive options to involve private players for enhancing distribution operations. The success of Torrent Power as a DF player in Bhiwandi in Maharashtra has fuelled the other states to adopt this model. Other operational areas include Agra (UP), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Aurangabad (Maharashtra), Jalgaon (Maharashtra) and Sagar (MP).

JICA approves loan of Rs.960 Cr. for Agra, SPML bagged Rs. 721 Cr. project in Gujarat and Bihar, more...

This is a newsletter for the month of April, 2014 sent to mailing list of pManifold sharing Water Distribution industry opportunities and updates.

We continue to share Water Distribution Utility updates for broader community development. Some of them are mentioned below and hope you find it useful. 

New Water Project Highlights in March - 2014

JICA approves loan of Rs.960 Cr. for Agra Water Project more... SPML Infra has bagged projects worth Rs. 721 Cr. in Gujarat and Bihar more... HCC, GVPR Engineers JV bags Rs. 904 Cr. project in Karnataka more... 24x7 Metered Water Supply move begins at Ahmedabad more... Steel Authority of India & CII Triveni Water Institute signs MOU on Ensuring Water Efficiency more...

Articles of March - 2014

Doom predicted for India in 2050 more.. CSR spend on water is a big challenge more... Research and Markets: The Wastewater Treatment Plants Market in India is Expected to Grow more...

Upcoming Water Events

2nd International Conference on Waste Water Technology for Greening India 2014 (ICWWTGI-2014) - 2nd June, Pune - Maharashtra more..

Blogs

Peeking into the challenges in managing waste water in the tier-2/3 cities in India more.. SCADA system to better monitor India city's water distribution network more..

Case Studies

If you are prospecting to enter in Water Utilities as Operator or Service Provider or Vendor - learn some best practices through case studies from pManifold (Water Utility Case Studies).

IUKAN 2014 - POST EVENT UPDATES

The 2nd Annual IUKAN Conference was conducted at New Delhi on 13th Feb, 2014 at Le Meridien. The conference was attended by 250+ Thought Leaders and Delegates. The conference proceedings, pictures and participating companies details can be seen at http://www.iukan.in/conference-2014/proceedings-post-event/ Awards recipients in their respective categories that broadly saw participation of 65+ nominations from 35+ companies across 8 categories and 2 tracks. pManifold's Utility Practice can be viewed here, please contact me at +91 99704-62580 or at mohammad.sufiyan@pmanifold.com, if you would like to know more about us.   pManifold's services in Utility ranges from Go-to-Market Research & Advisory, Technical Feasibility, Financial Bid Advisory, Takeover Advisory, Analytics, Customer Intelligence & Satisfaction Monitoring, process improvement consulting, organizing stakeholder conferences and others.

ARE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES AT RISK DUE TO POWER QUALITY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES?

Asia Power Quality Initiative (APQI) aims to create and build awareness on issues related to Power Quality (PQ). APQI was 'Power Quality' partner to IUKAN 2014 earlier this year. The group continues spreading the essential message of PQ to various stakeholders, helping businesses and industries with improved understanding and insights.

Recently, they published a very interesting blog on 'ARE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES AT RISK DUE TO POWER QUALITY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES?'.

This blog underlines the importance of PQ in today's fast growing power electronics and IT driven businesses. Developing economies like India continue to struggle for 24x7 power supply and are lagging in terms of their PQ expectations though striving hard for energy efficient economy. The blog focuses on the associated economic impact due to PQ issues and challenges borne by developing countries. Can we afford to ignore that risk by remaining ignorant!

For detailed blog, please see following link: http://www.apqi.org/blog/are-developing-economies-at-risk-due-to-power-quality-issues-and-challenges.html

Posted by: Kunjan Bagdia @ pManifold

JSEB Franchisee bid submission date extended, Mr. Ajoy Mehta's Vision Session at IUKAN 2014 - Power Distribution Newsletter, April 2014

This is a newsletter for the month of April, 2014 sent to mailing list of pManifold sharing Power Distribution industry opportunities and updates.

We continue to share Power Distribution Utility updates for broader community development. Some of them are mentioned below and hope you find it useful. 

Existing Opportunities Last date of bid submission for Jharkhand State Electricity Board's (JSEB) floated tenders for appointment of Collection based Distribution Franchisee model in its 10 rural sub-division has been extended by 12th April, 2014. (Readhere)  Roll Outs from Utilities  In order to ensure reliable power supply and to reduce the breakdown and voltage fluctuation, Spanco Nagpur Discom Limited (SNDL) to invest Rs. 30 Cr. to augment its power network. (Read here) An integrated project of Automated Demand Response (ADR) and AMI are conceptualized together by TPDDL to improve the power reliability and to manage peak power demand more optimally. (Read here)