SPOTLIGHT
IoT as a key differentiator in
the renewable energy sector
By Prakash Nayak
W ith the awareness about global warm-
ing and depleting of fossil fuels being
on the rise, the world is shifting
towards alternative sources of fuel to power its
needs. Of them, the most sustainable option is the
renewable energy. As on June 2016, Indias total
power generation capacity touched 303GW which
includes 42,85GW of Renewable Energy. Renew-
able electricity sources are targeted to grow mas-
sively by 2022 to 175GW, including more than the
double of Indias large wind power capacity from
27.5GW to 60GW and an almost 15 fold increase
in solar power from 8.06GW to 100GW and 10
GW from bio power and 5GW from small hydro
power. The ambitious targets would see India
quickly becoming one of the leading green energy
producers in the world and surpassing numerous
developed countries.
The Renewable energy field is spreading
across geographies. It is fast becoming one of
the most thriving businesses on the planet. With
strong market, comes stiff competition. Hence,
efficiency, operating costs, profitability, and
productivity of course reliability are of prime im-
portance. This is not possible by simply focusing
on mechanical or electrical engineering aspects.
The ability to continuously monitor and maintain
high performance real time data over the time
will enhance the deployment more aggressively
than before. Also, most of these resources being
variable and distributed geographically make it
difficult to monitor, maintain and up-keep the
plant. This is where IoT kicks in.
Imagine the world where you can not only
generate and use your own electricity, large
enough to meet your power requirement with
lighting, air conditioners, hot water showers, etc.
Also see the situation where you can sell excess
power to the utilities to earn money. This is what
renewable energy offers. The process, however,
isnt that easy to handle. Be it a hydro-power
plant small enough to run on the stream or creek
that flows near your home or a small wind power
turbine generator in your farm, installed near
your rural residence or a solar plant on roof of
30 PowerWatch INDIA March 2017
your home- it all requires numerous variables
that need be monitored and maintained result-
ing in optimised power source. This process will
prove to be extremely difficult for manual labour
to perform efficiently. Because, for all these, the
source of electricity is variable. At times it will be
sunny and at other times cloudy. It is windy on
a particular day and no wind at all the next day.
It is impossible to have dedicated computer for
every individual component of the system when
they are distributed. Just imagine, if we can
predict this variable nature of resources in much
more scientific and analytical way, we could man-
age and optimise the generation along with rest
of the sources in the Grid. This is where IoTs
potential can be unleashed.
Be it the wind blade stuck up or gearbox
worn-out in the wind turbine or the cells individ-
ual temperatures in a solar farm goes high, today
every imaginable component can be monitored
and sensed. Data can be collected and also be
uploaded to the cloud for processing. Thanks to
internet and digital connectivity, this process is
efficient and most cost effective when compared
to a single dedicated PC/SCADA handling all the
variables.
The sensors and devices used in IoT and its
immaculate operations may be small, but make
no mistake. It is a huge industry which is devel-
oping and its immeasurable potential will touch
every other sector, most prominently in the en-
ergy sector, with shifting its focus on Renewable
Energy for exploiting available natural resources
in abundance.
If you are already using captive renewable
power and are looking for IoTs applications, it
is understood that you know about Predictive
maintenance compared to conventional preven-
tive maintenance. The predictive maintenance
with manual approach, though powerful as a
tool by sensing and predictive calculations done
with a specific time interval, is prone to errors.
Imagine a set of sensors working like bees round
the clock, measuring all parameters every second,
and performing predictive calculations and pro-
vides a means of predictive maintenance like no
technology has ever offered. This is where IoT will
add value to you and your business.
From a technical point of view, renewable ener-
gy sector will be vastly improved in the following
three major ways:
Big data analytics, faster analysis of sensor
outputs and breaking Up of Analytical Data for
common man.
When you have so many data to crunch in so less
time, so small enough that you cannot possibly ar-
rive at a conclusion in time for an action, big data
is the key. Typically in renewable energy sector,
for an efficient operation, a humongous amount
of data like, historical meteorological informa-
tion, real-time information on load profile etc., is
being transferred and analyzed to get optimized
outputs. With the big data analysis and the cloud
storage capabilities, companies and start-ups in
the energy will get to faster results and ultimately,
better efficiency. The common man should be able
to understand the information and link them to
the reality. Like when wind is not blowing he can
relate that the generation is down and he can also
predict the generation from wind turbine will be
good in these months of the year and also relate
to what happened in previous years. Just imagine
his mobile phone throwing up this information
instantaneously. Predictive analytics when used
deftly on renewable energy power plants can
provide accurate energy production forecasts.
The analytics predicts the machine breakdowns
or glitches, checks for the correlation of various
parameters like irradiation, wind speed, tempera-
ture, humidity, cloud cover, transformer status etc.
and learns their cause and effect
relationship.
Decentralisation of data
One will agree that big data is a must in mass
scale deployment of renewable energy genera-
tion. The downside of using big data for analysis
is storage capabilities, be it the cloud or the hard
disk storage on site, is very limited as when com-
pared to the data that it collects and stores. Large
data storage means large space occupation, larger
security risk and subsequently the costs that ac-
company this also huge. Hence, a decision must
be made so as to decide what data to keep and
what to delete. All the essential data should be
kept for the future calculations and usage trends.
The conventional way to store the said data would
be on a centralized server, but that is in the past.
With the advancement in the decentralization
of database techniques, all essential data could
be stored in individual data holding centres with
enhanced security and reliability.
Self-Learning Machines, Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
According to a study, 20% 40% of renewable
energy cannot be used because it is unstable. Predic-
tive analytics when used deftly on renewable energy
power plants can provide accurate energy produc-
tion forecasts. Hence, this will be used in the predic-
tion of the future load and computing the real-time
big data and storage of the said data, the decision
to be made so as to keep what data and delete the
rest cannot be humanly done within an acceptable
time limit. In due course of time, all the computing
decisions could be made entirely by Artificial Intel-
ligence for most efficient operation.
Power sector capitalising on IoT
One of the important tasks for the Indian power sec-
tor is integration of renewable energy in to the tradi-
tional grid with large part powered from steam tur-
bines and hydro turbines which generates power till
it is switched off. What is going to be different from
now onwards when large portion of Renewable
energy 175GW is integrated, which is variable, like
when wind blows, the machine will generate 1000s
of MW and when wind stops the power generation
comes down to few MW in a fraction of min/sec,
same is the case with solar, good sunshine there is
huge generation sudden cloud passing through the
area it will come down again to few MW. Whereas
the load pattern may not be varying in this man-
ner this will call for much better predictive tool and
archived information on the behaviours of these
sources of energy in every geographical locations.
Also ramping down and ramp up of the base load
machines i.e. steam turbines and hydro turbines
is also to be done instantaneously.This is exactly
where IoT will play a big role in integrating in most
efficient and effective way and will be a key differ-
entiator in the renewable energy sector and has the
potential to dramatically transform energy sector
and optimising overall energy mix in the grid.
The author is Senior
Fellow at IET and
Director, PEnA Power.
March 2017 PowerWatch INDIA 31