Bharat Light and Power and IBM collaborate to drive business growth

MUMBAI, INDIA:Bharat Light and Power (BLP), a leading renewable energy producer in India, has formed a strategic engagement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to drive business growth, enhance revenue and increase operational efficiency. In this 10-year collaboration, BLP will use IBM's SoftLayer cloud capabilities, built on open standards, as well as IBM analytics and mobile solutions to increase its power generation capacity.

According to industry estimates, approximately 400 million people in India do not have access to electricity. At the same time, India's energy infrastructure is highly strained, with an ever increasing demand for energy. To sustain its growth trajectory, India needs to meet its energy demands in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Tejpreet S Chopra, president & CEO of BLP said:"The Indian power sector has doubled its capacity in the last 10 years and is projected to add another 100GW in next five years. With the issues facing fossil-based fuels, a good share of this growth will come from renewable energy sources. The scope of investments for renewables is estimated to be $10-12 billion in next five years making it ripe for global investments in India."

BLP is one of the largest clean energy generation companies in India. It aims to address the sustainable energy challenge by increasing its renewable energy generation capacity to one giga watt (GW) over the next few years. The company focuses on wind, solar, biomass and hydro technologies for power generation and is exploring other advanced technologies such as energy storage, and smart grid to better integrate renewable energy to the grid. BLP also uses its years of expertise in building, owning and operating power plants around the globe to offer pre-development and post commissioning services to wind farm developers, operators, owners, investors and lenders.

The integration of disparate systems across the enterprise is critical so all users have access to one version of the truth and a fuller view of the most comprehensive data, regardless of their department or role. Cloud computing provides the fastest, most efficient delivery of IT resources for integration without the need for extensive start-up or capital budgeting.

IBM will work with BLP to help the company manage, and effectively use the vast amount of data generated by the power generation sources. With efficient and predictive analysis of data, energy producers can better manage their resources, take necessary precautionary measures, and improve overall productivity. IBM will deploy its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure as a service to centrally monitor and manage BLP's existing and future generation plants as well as store and manage the data on cloud.

IBM and BLP's big data analytics capabilities will help gather valuable insights from the data generated, which will ensure that BLP has an integrated view of its operations and is equipped to take pro-active measures. Using IBM's mobile technology the company will be able to provide all the information, analyzed on the cloud platform, to its ground staff on their handsets and alert them well in advance. This will enable BLP to build smarter operations with higher efficiency and greater utilization.

"The focus of power generation globally, and especially in India, in the next five years is going to be about operational efficiency and productivity enhancements. This requires an intelligent and innovative collaboration between the power and the IT sector. BLP has ambitious growth plans for providing this service and we needed a strategic partner who understands, and helps us realize, our vision," said Balki G. Iyer, chief development officer, BLP. "A significant factor in selecting IBM was its rich global experience in the renewable energy sector and scalable technology capabilities that suits our requirement."

The solution is expected to significantly improve BLP's Plant Load Factor (PLF), which is essentially the generation efficiency of the installed capacity. IBM will also bring its subject matter experts to help BLP take effective business decisions and make efficient planning, based on the data analysis.

"By making clean energy widely available and affordable, BLP is solving a very important challenge for India and we are excited about collaborating with BLP on this transformative journey. We see tremendous potential for smarter operations, using cloud and analytics, in achieving scale and efficiencies in this business. As a strategic partner, we will deliver measurable business outcomes to BLP by bringing together expertise and capabilities across IBM," said Ajoy Menon, director of strategic outsourcing, Global Technology Services, IBM India South Asia.