The smart microgrid using IoT senses real-time demands from each test bench in the plant, the recovery potential, plant’s internal electrical demand and the grid’s capability to accept the recovered electricity surplus from the plant
By Amit Ranjan
The record-high air pollution in Delhi most recently gave a wake-up call to take decisive actions to improve air quality. Recent studies say that India ranks 4th worldwide and accounts for 5.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Some environment scientists put the average life expectancy in India to 63 years; the air quality is to be blamed for this.
Data charted by Central Electricity Authority of India for October 2016, indicates that 70% of our current energy sources are carbon emitting sources. If we pair this with our current global position in emissions and our increasing demand for energy, the need to focus on non-carbon emitting sources of energy will be paramount.
Many nations including India have so far zeroed in for solutions such as solar energy or wind energy. However, both of them come with their own setbacks such as compatibility or ecosystem, for instance, solar installations give energy during peak sun time only or for wind energy- the wind intensity is unpredictable. Amidst this, imagine a process that can recover wasted energy into green energy constantly without needing any special climatic conditions? The potential of such recycling may be huge, depending on the particular type of industrial process.
Taking a cue from it, we at Asterisk Green Inc, a New York-based Indian startup, are focusing on waste energy recovery from automotive industry. We have developed a system of smart dynamometers or test benches integrated with a smart microgrid, for engine development process which recovers mechanical energy generated by these engines and converts it into usable electricity. Typical magnitude of this recovery from a car or a truck plant is 80MW-120MW of continuous electricity. This is about 1.4Crore INR worth of domestic electricity every day.
The smart microgrid using IoT senses real-time demands from each test bench in the plant, the recovery potential, plant’s internal electrical demand and the grid’s capability to accept the recovered electricity surplus from the plant. Based on the collected real-time data and electricity buy and sell rates made available to it, the smart microgrid either captively consumes the generated electricity or supplies to other connected plants or to the grid optimizing the revenue yield.
This kind of system can be further wonderful when applied to other heat generating industries (those with inefficient furnaces) like oil refineries, metal works amongst others. The internet-connected smart microgrids communicate with each other, even when physically apart from each other, hence working in unison and acting as one single good quality power source to the grid.
The smart microgrid system conditions the electrical power for the optimal voltage, frequency & phase, and arrests spikes before putting the electricity out to the grid. If the grid can be made smart enough to communicate, the system can be made to lead or lag in power factor, which will even improve the power quality of the grid.
The author is founder Asterisk Green Inc