Data and Innovation.
One of the most intriguing questions that I have faced around concepts like AI, IoT, and Data Analytics is whether these concepts are core to the business or at the periphery. In a new age organization Data and its management is central to how an organization is structured and hence Platforms and Concepts around them are crucial to the success of an organization. Combine these concepts with strong domain-driven Business Applications and we will end up having the building blocks of a new organization.
As I had once written, any new industry comes in 4 cycles, Core Innovation and Early Adoption, Accelerated Adoption, Maturity, and Post Maturity. The above building blocks of data, IoT, and ML are the tools to drive the adoption and Maturity cycles.
CleanTech is also going through the same. Internet penetration means all parts of the world are connected to the Internet through some means or the other. Sensors and Devices connect Infrastructure to the Cloud. Smart computing enables the adoption of various computing principles coming out of the Cleantech Infra. All of this is simple, so let’s look at what data means to the #Cleantech Industry.
i. Smart O&M – Solar being a distributed Infrastructure means that maintenance processes are delinked from the real-time status of the assets. The industry is moving towards Condition-based maintenance which is derived from real-time data coming from Assets. This is being driven by IoT sensors and Platforms and will be a key shift in industry practices
ii. Forecast – Solar being an asset that produces electricity based on multiple parameters, the weather being one, needs to forecast how much electricity is being produced so that the grids do not get overwhelmed or underwhelmed. Day-ahead forecasting and benchmarking the same, against Solar Production tools like PVSyst, is now a fairly established practice being driven by concepts around IoT, Weather Charts Platforms, AI (😊, there we used the term AI)
iii. Battery Storage – Battery storage is one of the most underestimated infrastructures in the whole value chain. It stores energy and discharges energy hence in an off-grid world it becomes a generator of energy (Weird but true). It’s an infra which has chemistry, Material Science, Electronics, and Electrical Engineering combining together. Every moving part works to ensure that the device works to its maximum capacity or optimum capacity. iRasus, a disruptive startup in the cleantech domain, is working on a SAAS-based platform to understand all the 4 elements of battery storage namely from the prism of Data. Data drives inferences, inferences when mapped against hypothesis gives understanding, understanding, when mapped against Business Logic, produces results.
iv. New Business Applications – Data organizations use data and tech to build new businesses. New Businesses come from creating a new product or service or from driving business goals differently with more efficiency hence creating new value (Ref: Blue Ocean Strategy). Data drives Business Applications which drive New Revenue Models and Revenue Assurance. Payments, Discovery, Interoperability will all be driven by Data.
To my friends in the Tech domain, we should work on fundamental innovations in Computing and Data Space that is important, like fundamental research in sciences that’s important. However, the value addition comes from implementing the fundamental innovations in the Application space, and in Cleantech the work has just started.
Arjun Sinha Roy
CEO and Co-Founder
