siliconindia | | March 20198By Guru Inder, Founder, Director & COO, Amplus SolarIN MY OPINIONT here are two sides to a business's energy balance sheet, demand & supply. On the demand side, energy needs vary across businesses, in terms of direct contribution to the product or services that they sell like electricity for running the machines or indirect contribution like office lightning, chilling, transportation fuel, and others. On the supply side, electricity is provided by the distribution company, onsite generators (solar, diesel, gas), power exchange, and offsite open access projects. Heat is generated mostly from fossil fuels and sometimes as the by-product of a process, say the sleeve heat from a gas engine. Today, one can buy power from the power exchange or open access projects on short-term or long-term basis. Day ahead power to 25-year contracts, everything is available in the market. This gives the consumer the power to decide and save money. It can buy green energy directly from the supplier, from onsite solar plants or from offsite RE plants that transport electricity through the grid by paying a rental. Tomorrow, electric vehicles may replace a major part of the fossil fuel fleet. They may as well act as your batteries for storing electricity. The first step a business needs to take is to start record-ing its energy (electricity, heat, fuel) consumption, in as much granularity as possible and in any case automatically. The reason for latter is that we have seen collection of a lot of data manually which when needed is never available in a analyseable form and has errors. With a lot of IoT startups across the country, and low cost of IoT hardware, it has be-come very easy to install sensors across your business and collect real-time data.Next comes the supply side data. The Discom bill has fixed charges and variable charges. Fixed charges in turn have contracted load linked charges and electricity duty. An alumnus of IMT, Ghaziabad, Guru has more than a decade of experience in new business origination, financing, contract negotiation, execution and management of renewable & conventional energy projects. Prior to Amplus Solar, he was associated with Azure Power.DEMAND & SUPPLY: THE TWO SIDES OF A BUSINESS's ENERGY BALANCE SHEET
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