One hundred years later...
One hundred years later what will happen to the energy industry?
I was in the TANENERGY summit 2019. We closed pretty active year with a summit of ideas and thoughts from various people on the Energy vertical in Tamil Nadu.
We had the wonderful Dr Sivathanu Pillai, the man behind the Brahmos Missile, tell us all how the energy is going to get generated in space and then beamed back to Earth using Microwave technologies!
And then, we also had the Vice President Marketing of Hyundai Motors India Ltd., to come in and announce the arrival of their electric SUV that can run 650 kms in one charge! That means, you can travel to Bangalore and return from Chennai! What looked impossible just three years back seems a possibility.
Well if that is what is going to happen with in three years, what could happen one hundred years hence?
Join my imaginary wagon! Let me take you on this ride and let us take a look at what is going to happen in the Energy Sector in 2100, Tamil Nadu in Particular, India in General and world at large.
2100 might see the global warming getting reversed!
We saw, Hyundai Motors announce their fuel cell cars not so long ago on how they would 'breathe in' carbon dioxide and breath out Oxygen. And it was news because Modi-ji saw the car and said we need more of it!
And more would have come in, not just in small numbers but volumes! And from all manufacturers. Either Electricity as a driving force might have vanished in its current form or might have morphed itself into a form that will not be using any batteries! Batteries are an inefficient way of storing and retrieving power. Believe me! Batteries work at about 85% efficiency when they are new and at 40 to 50% efficiency when they are old. No prizes for guessing how much power we are wasting, particularly, in our UPS systems at home and elsewhere.
Second, most conspicuous change would be the distribution generation and of course, distributed storage as well of electric energy.
The Netmeters would have been installed in almost every home and factory in the country. Every home / industry will be a generating station as well as a consumption point. Some points they will feed power in and certain others they might be consuming. The UPS / batteries in each house / factory / industry will be used for storing power whenever there is an excess generation available on the grid.
I am not guessing. Already Swedish companies have announced intelligent battery storage systems connected to the grid. Any battery system with a capacity of over 5kW could be used on need basis for storing and drawing electric power. With a huge battery capacity that we have, all the surplus generation could just be pumped into these distributed storages and then taken back from them when needed. Of course, with the current inefficient batteries this might work out to be a loss but as batteries improve and the cost of power moves up, this could become viable.
But the best part is, that the power could be generated at a very low price and the market for power could touch as low a figure as zero on an average. This could happen because there will be occasions when the generating stations might be paying the consumer for taking power from them!
It has already happened in Germany in 2018 and is not very far off in India too. Prices would fall to very low levels because of the large power plants might have paid off all their cost and could currently be working with zero capital cost on them. Well maintained wind turbines and solar power plants will literally produce power for 40 to 50 paise per kWh!
Life is going to become difficult for the energy fellows! But the delivered cost could be pretty different. It will be the distribution companies and the rest of the people in between who will be enjoying the falling prices.
Another set of people who will enjoy the fall in power prices will be the industries and the traction companies. Moving from one place to another on electricity would become very cheap! More in it in my next blog on the roads of 2100.
But what will happen to the regulatory set up and the distribution companies that we have. Most possibly they would have morphed themselves into a profit making distribution company working under an open regulatory system. You and I should be able to buy power from A company in the morning, B in the evening and from C for the night! For today and for any other day!
Deregulation will be the watch word for regulation.
Are we ready for the new world order?
I was in the TANENERGY summit 2019. We closed pretty active year with a summit of ideas and thoughts from various people on the Energy vertical in Tamil Nadu.
We had the wonderful Dr Sivathanu Pillai, the man behind the Brahmos Missile, tell us all how the energy is going to get generated in space and then beamed back to Earth using Microwave technologies!
And then, we also had the Vice President Marketing of Hyundai Motors India Ltd., to come in and announce the arrival of their electric SUV that can run 650 kms in one charge! That means, you can travel to Bangalore and return from Chennai! What looked impossible just three years back seems a possibility.
Well if that is what is going to happen with in three years, what could happen one hundred years hence?
Join my imaginary wagon! Let me take you on this ride and let us take a look at what is going to happen in the Energy Sector in 2100, Tamil Nadu in Particular, India in General and world at large.
2100 might see the global warming getting reversed!
We saw, Hyundai Motors announce their fuel cell cars not so long ago on how they would 'breathe in' carbon dioxide and breath out Oxygen. And it was news because Modi-ji saw the car and said we need more of it!
And more would have come in, not just in small numbers but volumes! And from all manufacturers. Either Electricity as a driving force might have vanished in its current form or might have morphed itself into a form that will not be using any batteries! Batteries are an inefficient way of storing and retrieving power. Believe me! Batteries work at about 85% efficiency when they are new and at 40 to 50% efficiency when they are old. No prizes for guessing how much power we are wasting, particularly, in our UPS systems at home and elsewhere.
Second, most conspicuous change would be the distribution generation and of course, distributed storage as well of electric energy.
The Netmeters would have been installed in almost every home and factory in the country. Every home / industry will be a generating station as well as a consumption point. Some points they will feed power in and certain others they might be consuming. The UPS / batteries in each house / factory / industry will be used for storing power whenever there is an excess generation available on the grid.
I am not guessing. Already Swedish companies have announced intelligent battery storage systems connected to the grid. Any battery system with a capacity of over 5kW could be used on need basis for storing and drawing electric power. With a huge battery capacity that we have, all the surplus generation could just be pumped into these distributed storages and then taken back from them when needed. Of course, with the current inefficient batteries this might work out to be a loss but as batteries improve and the cost of power moves up, this could become viable.
But the best part is, that the power could be generated at a very low price and the market for power could touch as low a figure as zero on an average. This could happen because there will be occasions when the generating stations might be paying the consumer for taking power from them!
It has already happened in Germany in 2018 and is not very far off in India too. Prices would fall to very low levels because of the large power plants might have paid off all their cost and could currently be working with zero capital cost on them. Well maintained wind turbines and solar power plants will literally produce power for 40 to 50 paise per kWh!
Life is going to become difficult for the energy fellows! But the delivered cost could be pretty different. It will be the distribution companies and the rest of the people in between who will be enjoying the falling prices.
Another set of people who will enjoy the fall in power prices will be the industries and the traction companies. Moving from one place to another on electricity would become very cheap! More in it in my next blog on the roads of 2100.
But what will happen to the regulatory set up and the distribution companies that we have. Most possibly they would have morphed themselves into a profit making distribution company working under an open regulatory system. You and I should be able to buy power from A company in the morning, B in the evening and from C for the night! For today and for any other day!
Deregulation will be the watch word for regulation.
Are we ready for the new world order?
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