The Hindu Business Line : Leveraging IT to ensure energy security

ENERGY is a key building block for sustaining any nation's socio-economic development. In his address to the nation on the eve of the 59th Independence Day, the President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, highlighted the importance of managing energy security.

As the global economy continues to grow, global energy needs as well as emissions will increase by 60 per cent between 2004 and 2030, as per the World Energy Outlook 2004 published by the International Energy Agency. Studies suggest that India's energy growth rate will be over 5 per cent per annum, which is higher than the global average.

Technology innovations can significantly contribute towards the development of clean, efficient, affordable energy sources over the longer term, while continuing to improve efficiency across various segments of the energy value chain.

Information technology (IT) can play the role of a facilitator in optimising the benefits from such innovations.

Approaches to enhance energy security

At present, the demand for electricity in India exceeds supply by 7.4 per cent and peak demand deficit stands at 12.2 per cent. India also meets 70 per cent of its crude oil demand through imports. Given these shortfalls any step that contributes towards either creating new sources of energy or helps in reducing energy consumption enhances energy security.

Encouraging the use of renewable energy sources such as bio-fuels, solar power and wind power through tax credits and other incentives for such technology innovations will help reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and thereby enhance energy independence.

Conservation and efficiency initiatives also contribute to enhancing energy security as they result in using less energy for undertaking the same tasks. We suggest an approach for developing a sustainable and secure energy system according to which it is necessary to focus on the supply side (comprising extraction and production) as well as the demand side (comprising of delivery and end use) of the energy value chain.

Focus on supply as well as demand

On the supply side, we need to rely on multiple sources to meet our increasing energy needs which would cover both renewable and non-renewable sources. For example, encouraging the use of bio-fuels such as bio-diesel from Jatropha curacas (an oil-producing shrub), solar power farms for agriculture, development of nuclear power using thorium, power through municipal waste, wind power, etc. will help reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and enhance energy independence.

Simultaneously, on the demand side we need to explore and encourage energy conservation opportunities. For example, it is essential to transmit and distribute energy with minimum losses and this issue was also highlighted in the President's address: "The loss of power in transmission and distribution in our country is currently in the region of 30-40 per cent for a variety of reasons. We need to take urgent action to bring down this loss to 15 per cent by close monitoring of the losses, improving efficiency, and increasing the power factor through modern technology." A comprehensive energy security strategy would require us to focus both on supply as well as demand side of the energy value chain.

Technology-led initiatives

An environmentally sustainable energy system necessitates technological breakthroughs, which can lead to a paradigm shift in the way we extract, produce, deliver and use energy.

In the Table, the energy value chain has been divided into two parts, one being the supply side and the other being the demand side to highlight the various innovations contributing towards development of clean, efficient, affordable energy technologies over the longer term, and efforts towards improving the current generation of technologies.

Harnessing energy successfully from various sources will require advanced materials, new designs, and storage solutions. Recent scientific advances in nano-technology will contribute significantly to developing advanced materials and devices which will enhance cost-effectiveness and increase operational effectiveness — for example, in energy transmission and storage.

Also, new technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence will also contribute towards improving the design and control aspects of energy management systems.

IT as facilitator

Leveraging IT will increasingly be critical to optimising existing fuel sources, developing new sources, operating and maintaining assets, manufacturing equipment, delivery, and monitoring energy use. IT could contribute significantly in introducing new devices that can operate in real time, facilitate dynamic pricing, risk management, demand-side management, energy efficiency and monitor energy flows.

There have, of late, been an explosion of initiatives in the drive to ensure energy security and IT has taken centre-stage as a facilitator in reaping the benefits from the modern technologies discussed earlier. In particular, IT has made a significant contribution towards enhancing energy security in certain areas.

In the exploration and production segment, IT can facilitate improved finding and recovery rates and driven efficiencies, for example in:

Estimating reservoir boundaries using of remote inference techniques.

Developing a reservoir simulation model able to accurately predict the production capacity of a given reservoir.

Assisting line managers and corporate office function in tracking of production operations.

Delivering new technologies and techniques to increase recovery and reduce "dry holes".

In the refining segment, IT can improve plant operations, reduce manpower requirements and drive efficiencies, for example:

Managing plant assets more effectively through flexible software solution that supports refining operations.

Managing a plant's operational and environmental performance characteristics and assisting in complying with government regulations through IT-enabled control systems.

Software solutions will help manage both sales and purchasing operations. The system must facilitate the purchase of feedstock; help track feedstock and product inventories, demand forecast and supports tracking of sales of a wide range of fuel outputs. Such systems will have the ability to easily handle multiple product origins, multiple units of measurement and multiple currencies. In the network or delivery segment, IT can improve knowledge of energy flows to optimise delivery. For example, IT systems can help track energy flow, usage and losses and also assist in handling contingencies which may occur for a variety of operational and accounting-related reasons. In the consumption or end-use segment, IT can be a key factor in delivering advanced devices to enable demand-side management and reduce overall demand, through the use of, for example, devices such as automatic demand controllers and tools for monitoring equipment performance in energy-intensive industries.

Over the next 20 years there will be even greater changes to the energy mix and the way energy delivery systems operate. Advanced, efficient, cleaner, affordable energy technologies will play a key role in managing the energy demand to improve energy security and IT will be a key enabler in the implementation of all such technology led solutions. IT and the latest technologies discussed have a symbiotic relationship as behind the successful development and deployment of these advanced technologies are IT based systems, without which it would be impossible to derive the full benefits from such technological breakthroughs.

(Pradeep Roy is a Senior Consultant and Sachin Kumar a Consultant with the Energy & Utilities Group in Infosys Technologies Ltd, Bangalore. The views are personal.)

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