Mr. Sam Pitroda, Advisor to Prime Minister, Government of India

At GridWeek 2012 held in Mumbai Mr. Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister, Government of India and Chairman, Indian Smart Grid Task Force, set the stage with his inaugural speech by giving the example of the revolution that took place in the telecom sector some years back “Today India is a country of connected billion as compared to earlier India and that connectivity gives us new hope. I remember in 1980-81 India had only 2 million telephone connections for 750 million people and it used to take 15 years to get a telephone connection. But, just in a short span of 20-25 years we have been able to mobilize a lot of talent, resources and get to a point where we have 900 million mobile subscribers and this is what we call a real revolution.” we are indeed a nation of connected billion with lots of diversity which is our strength.

Now on our journey to become a Smart Grid Nation we need to be smart enough to channelize our resources and talent. And, on this path we have to face certain challenges such as disparity with regards to rich-poor, urban-rural, educated-uneducated etc. Demography represents a huge challenge and opportunity both. We have 550 million young people, below the age of 25, so it’s our responsibility to nurture them with the requisite sets of skill. To me these 550 million are the work force for the world and not just India because everywhere else the population is ageing and decreasing while in India the population is young and increasing. The third challenge is development, we really need to grab the process of development and use the success that we had in IT and Telecom and plan how to do things going forward.

The government is making some big bets that I want to share with you, some of these ideas, which are being undertaken or planned for smart grid. Our government is committed to democratization of information, which sounds trivial but it has far reaching applications on how you build a nation going forward. The efforts are being made to provide connectivity and develop good applications. Applications and content which is relevant to India in local language with local capabilities to really solve local problems, so we need an Indian model of development as western model of development at times is not sustainable or workable in India.

The government has initiated two major programs which will link into smart grid ultimately; one is called National Knowledge Network (NKN) where government is building an IP Network with gigabit capabilities to connect 1500 plus nodes across the country for education and research to expand, excel & collaborate. All our universities, R&D laboratories and libraries will be connected through this virtual network. Further, this network will be connected to US, Japan, EU, Singapore and other places, which enable us to share global resource. Of these 750 nodes are already connected and the balance 750 nodes will be operational in the next 12 months. NKN will be the backbone for the education, health, research and multiple applications for the future. This program will cost us about USD 3-4 billion (INR 15,000 – 20,000 crore).

Next program is to create rural broadband to connect all 250,000 panchayats in two years for democratizing information, openness, connectivity, transparency and accountability. This country already has about a 10,00,000 km of optical fiber and we need to add roughly 400,000 km optical fiber to connect all our local governments and that program will cost us another USD 6 billion (INR 30,000 crore). Once we have this connectivity of optical fiber to local governments we will begin to look at new models of education, health and services. So, we are creating multiple open platforms for sharing.

Today about 10,000 software people are working in government on different platforms like cyber security, payment portals, procurement, national data centers etc. As per the estimates the government would be spending close to USD 20 billion (INR 100,000 crore), in democratizing information. And, I don’t know about any government in the world today that is willing to make this kind of commitment to build future. It’s indeed a very ambitious program and we believe that in next 2-3 years it will be in place. Then the next challenge would be to really cut loose to play on these new business models, applications and new way of doing things.

The government has officially declared 2010-20 as the decade of innovation for which it has set up USD 1 billion (INR 5,000 crore) Venture Fund to foster ‘Innovation’ across sectors and states. We have set up a National Innovation Center (NIC) that will oversee state innovation centers and 100 sectoral innovation houses. All these efforts will beautifully tie-up into the smart grids. Today I personally think that power is our biggest bottleneck for 8% GDP growth. The larger challenge is to give power to the bottom of the pyramid and that too cheap power for which we have to focus on affordability. In India the real challenge for all of us is affordability and scalability.

From my perspective smart grid is all about using IT to manage power in the future. And, it’s amazing to see how India which is a super power in IT, lags terribly in the power sector. It is really annoying to see our primitive ways of providing power be it evacuation, grids, meters or even the way we manually calculate power consumption till date.

The government of India decided to set up Smart Grid Task Force in May 2010. The idea was to create awareness, co-ordinate various efforts on smart grids, identify services, practices and programs, co-ordinate different ministerial activities at state and federal level, review and mandate other efforts on smart grid and pull all of these together. The guiding principle was to first develop Indian model of smart grid, with indigenous capabilities, local equipments, hardware, software and talent. Another focus is to address the problem of huge amount of leakages in the system which are close to 30-38%.

The government reckons that India needs 100 million meters and towards this end the smart meter task force will be entrusted the task of introducing Rs. 1000 – 1500 low cost meters. We need a 2-chip meter that can be connected through GSM technology. Basically a dumb meter that is smart enough. These low cost meters will feed critical data into the smart grids that are considered to be the panacea for our primitive power sector. We will spend about close to USD 40-50 million (INR 200-250 crore).

Cyber security is a great concern to us, there are regulatory issues that we are looking at and we believe that the process is just beginning. It will take a little bit of time for us to really understand little more as how smart grid is going to benefit us. We need to work hard and use the power of IT to really manage our energy resources.

Today privatization and liberalization has created large amount of entrepreneurs in this country. The mood is very upbeat but the reality is very complex. Next decade is the decade of innovation, democratization of information, and we need to work hard as this will lay the foundation for the new India.

From the last many years I have been saying that the best brains in the world are busy in solving the problems of the rich whom I believe don’t have much of the problems, so as a result the problems of the poor doesn’t get the real talent. We have large amount of talent and a large amount of problems to be solved for the poor. And, it’s our moral responsibility to solve those and energy is one such big challenge. We need to bring energy to the bottom of the pyramid at the lowest cost possible with the right amount of efficiency and productivity.