Smart Grid

Before going through the post, let’s have a look into the image below.

So, to make all of the above internet stuffs to  active or alive, there exist one and foremost requirement.Yes, that’s the Electricity! But, who cares for that? It’s available all the time right? It seems to be available, but the actual scenario is something else. Let’s check the statistic given below.

“In India, 1 in every 3 watts generated at the Power station never reaches the light bulb in our house“.

And, if the wastage trend goes like this, by the end of 2020, there will be much scarcity of electricity across India. In fact there will be more power blackouts across the country.

The Problem
The problem with the current energy delivery system is it’s mainly one way supply of power , there will be no control over electric flow and the wastage is too much with the current transmission lines.  However the system is ageing and its struggling to keep up with the exponential demand.
The solution
One of the possible solution for this problem is to make the energy delivery system intelligent. Instead of one way supply of power, there will be two way communication between the energy producer and the consumer.  So here “SMART GRID” comes into the picture.

What is Smart Grid?
A smart grid is an electrical grid that uses information and communications technology to gather and act on information, such as information about the behaviors of suppliers and consumers, in an automated fashion to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity.

Much in the way that a “smart” phone these days means a phone with a computer in it, smart grid means “computerizing” the electric utility grid. It includes adding two-way digital communication technology to devices associated with the grid. Each device on the network can be given sensors to gather data (power meters, voltage sensors, fault detectors, etc.), plus two-way digital communication between the device in the field and the utility’s network operations center

Smart Grid : A Japanese Case Study
The Smart Grid in Japan can be classified by two category.  Those are Smart Grid ‘Before Fukushima’ and  Smart Grid ‘After Fukushima’. Because, before Fukushima, most Japanese had never heard about smart grids, and of the small minority who knew what they were, their reaction was “Japanese do not need a smart grid”. This is because for decades in Japan there were very few power blackouts. So its hardly surprising that a smart grid wasn’t given high priority.

After Fukushima: 
After the Fukushima earthquake, Japan’s energy situation obviously changed. People became more conscious about the smart grid technology. Though primary benefit of this is avoiding the power blackout, but there are other equal benefits like
1. Raising energy efficiency by shifting peak demand.
2. Increased use of renewable energy
3. Broader infrastructure for electric vehicles.

In late August, Japan’s Diet passed a clean energy bill, effective July 2012, that includes a European-style, feed-in-tariff plan requiring utilities to purchase renewable energy at fixed prices — including energy generated by solar-powered individual households.

Smart City: Along with the smart grid installation, Japanese are concentrating on Smart Cities plans, which are planned, energy-efficient communities that integrate environment-friendly power, transportation, and water supply systems utilizing advanced IT and other technologies. Worldwide, there is a huge potential market for building the infrastructure required for smart cities. The potential market through 2030 for transportation systems alone is estimated at $10 trillion, and for water systems it is $20 trillion.

Smart Home: One of the main highlight of Japan’s smart cities is the importance places on energy efficiency and power generation by the individual home, or smart home. Japanese use smart meters in their house to monitor or maintain the energy generation through solar panels batteries as well as home energy management.

Like Japan, many other countries are taken good interest in developing the Smart Grid technology across their region. But in India, the some of the challenges we are facing to implement the Smart Grid are power theft, low metering efficiency, inadequate infrastructure and lack of awareness and the huge investment to implement the entire smart grid infrastructure.

But, if we come up with a certain plan where we can incorporate a public private partnership to tackle these issues, it will be a huge benefit for the entire Indian smart grid ecosystem and which will make India an energy efficient country in the upcoming years.

Source: Wikipedia, Jetro, Ecolibriumenery

Home Automation Market in Indian Scenario

Let’s say if you are on the way to office, and suddenly you remembers that you forgot to switch off your AC and you are really got worried because it will increase your energy bills. What will you do in such a situation? Will you go back home to switch it off? It will work out when you are only few miles away from your home. What about you are far away from home? Don’t worry, just take your smart phone from your pocket and log into your Home Automation System on the phone and switch off your AC wherever you are.
Sounds cooool!!?? Yes, this is one of the example where the home automation comes into your help.

What it is?
The automation and control systems market may be broadly classified into building  automation and home automation, finding deployment in industrial, commercial and
residential settings. The commercial market which includes offices, educational institutions, hospitals and other types of buildings accounts for a bulk of revenues of the automation market. On the other hand, the residential market is regarded as an immense growth opportunity in the present scenario due to the increasing proliferation of dwelling units in a large number of cities and towns across the glob.

Home automation is the residential extension of “building automation”. It is automation of the home, housework or threshold activity. Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC(heating, Ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, and other systems to provide improved convenience, comfort energy efficiency and security.

The popularity of home automation has been increasing greatly in recent years due to much higher affordability and simplicity through smartphone and tablet connectivity.

Home Automation Market: An Overview

The rise in standard of living, combined with the growing awareness of both security and energy efficiency driving the demand and supply side for home automation products. Though the economic crisis has somewhat dampened the construction of luxurious
automated homes, researches are of the view that it will once again flourish in the coming years, as the technology-savvy young generation of today becomes home owners in the near future.

Market is mainly driven by the declining cost and complexity of home automation products. Once perceived as “elite class-only,” the home automation products are gaining widespread popularity mainly because of the development of standard-based technologies that can be integrated into existing communications/utility infrastructure of modern homes, resulting in lower cost systems that eliminate the need for bulky hardware and cabling.

If you go through my previous post about the “Nest Learning Thermostat” you will get a fairly good idea how they did revolution in thermostat industry, with their classy design and cool interface.

Home Automation Market in India
The India automation and control systems market has seen significant changes in dynamics over the years. Initially concentrated in the areas of HVAC and security
systems; the market has now evolved into newer areas like lighting systems, fire detection systems, entertainment systems and energy management systems as well. The
automation not only integrates different automation systems as mentioned above but also enables substantial power savings.

If we take the recent market study on the home automation, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30% over the 5 years to 2016, with applications such as security, lighting and energy management likely to play an important role in achieving this significant growth rate.

Increasing data thefts, burglaries, demand for enhanced security, need for energy management / conversion are a few of the key factors that have spurred the India automation and control systems market.

Smart home products are becoming an affordable luxury to the average Indian, while the increasing awareness of energy efficiency and smart living has been growing over the last few years. However, India is still not the lucrative choice for home automation majors. Honeywell Security, which has been prominent in the global home automation business over the last 20 years, launched its home systems business in India only in 2006. Legrand India, a subsidiary of the Legrand group based at Limoges, France, a manufacturer of electrical installation and information network products, has been in the smart home products space in the country since 2003. Researchers, however, conclude that home automation has a long way to go in India, but surely the interest is catching on 🙂

Major Players in Home Automation Market

Major players contributing to the growth of the global home automation market include AMX Corporation, ABB Ltd., Control4, Crestron Electronics Inc., GE Security, Haier Group, Home Automation Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Lightolier Controls, Lutron Electronics Inc., Schneider Electric Ltd., Siemens AG, SmartHome Controls Ltd., Smarthome Inc., Vantage Controls Inc, among others.

Apart from these Global players, there are quite a huge number of domestic players who are competing in the Home Automation Market. The list includes Astute Automation, Gadgeon Smart Systms, Energy Innovations, Sotereaa Systems, Intouch Networks, Cardea Smart Living Solutions, Smartbus Automations, Bandbord Innovations, Techaigle Systems – Mumbai

Source (biztechreport, wiki, cmrindia)
Images ( Liam Bell, Bill labus)

Nest – next generation thermostat

When I had a discussion with Freeman today about the Intelligent Home Monitoring system, he introduced me a new gadget called “Nest learning thermostat“. The term thermostat  makes some of my old memories fresh   . While I was in Manipal Dot Net, I got an opportunity to develop a wifi interface for the Radio Thermostat. My work was to make this thermostat ‘intelligent’ so that anyone who have this thermostat can control it remotely using a wifi.

But the real problem about these thermostats are they are not very user friendly. Most people never been bother program to these kind of programmable thermostat. As a result houses which uses these kind of device consume more energy than the homes without them.

Coming to The Nest Learning Thermostat, a cool and awesome thermostat designed by Nest, a company founded by Tony Fadell (a former Apple Employee and couple of other Apple employees). What’s makes this new thermostat to stand alone with the others? Is it because it is created by Tony Fadell?Or He helped design the iPod, hee ran the iPod and iPhone divisions of Apple for years? Certainly not. There are four factors which makes this beautiful piece into a cult product. Those are (source: nytimes)

1.  The look. The nest is gorgeous. It has a round shape and having a beautiful screen. It’s color screen glows orange when it’s heating, blue when it’s cooling. When you approach it, it turns on and goes off when no one nearby.

2. Nest has wifi in it. So that you can operate it online. You can program it online. It also can download software updates.

3. Learning. The Nest is supposed to program itself — and save you energy in the process. When you first install the Nest, you turn its ring to change the temperature as you would a normal thermostat — at bedtime, when you leave for work, and so on. A big, beautiful readout shows you the new setting and lets you know how long it will take your house to reach that temperature. That information, Nest says, is intended to discourage people from setting their thermostats to 90 degrees, for example, thinking that the temperature will rise to 70 faster. (It doesn’t.)

Over the course of a week or so, the thermostat learns from your manual adjustments. It notes when that happened, and what the temperature and humidity were, and so on. And it begins to set its own schedule based on your living patterns.

4. You can save lots of energy  by correctly programming the thermostat. Why should you waste money heating or cooling the downstairs when you’re in bed upstairs? Or when you are away at work all day?

Apart from these four points there are some more feature which makes Nest Learning Thermostat different from others. Such as it contains two proximity sensors (near and far), which detect whether anybody is actually in a room. If the sensors decide that nobody’s home, they let the temperature drop or rise to an outer limit you have defined — say, 65 in winter, 80 in summer — even if that absence isn’t part of your normal schedule.

Also, the installation part is too easier. If you are comfortable installing a light fixture, you can install nest by yourself.

By using Nest account and Nest Mobile app you can access the Nest on the go. You can change the temperature from miles away from home. Here is the some of what they can do:

• Control up to Ten thermostats in two homes from one account.
• Change the temperature.
• Check and adjust your schedule.
• See and change your settings.
• Put Nest in and out of Away mode.
• Show you a Nest leave if you are saving the energy.

Technology: The Nest Sense’s (technology used by Nest) job is to gather data to use in its calculations.

This data goes beyond just measuring the temperature in the room. In fact, Nest gathers data from the following sources:

• Three temperature sensors, designed to get a more precise measurement than a single sensor
• Motion and light sensors that detect activity in the room at a wide 150-degree angle
• A WiFi connection to get weather data about your area from the Internet

The Primary advantage over the Nest Learning Thermostat over other thermostat is its sleek design and its ability to use different data points to analyze users behavior, then form a energy-saving schedule to control the HVAC. But at the flip side, the main drawback of Nest is its cost! Its new to the market and costs $249 per thermostat. That’s more than twice and in some cases five times the cost of programmable thermostats from established brands.

On the whole The Nest is gorgeous, elegant and very, very smart. It will keep your house at the right temperature, save you money and do some good for the planet. Put another way, it can make you comfortable in more ways than one.
(source: HSW)

First Day @ Startup School

Finally the wait is over! Reached the Slicon Cost of India. For an intense 3 month training program @startupschool.

Watch this space for more technical oriented posts.

Till then cheeeersss!!!

The Burrp Mafia – awesome people who built extraordinary products and companies

In Silicon Valley, they use the term Paypal Mafia to identify early stage employees of Paypal who later created some of the most disruptive internet products. I’ll tell you about a desiavatar. And trust me, you’d be taken aback by this revelation.

Allow me to add some context related to the Burrp Mafia first. Burrp, a local listings and recommendations platform, was co-founded by Deap Ubhi and Anand Jain in 2006. I joined the company in its infancy when the tool wasn’t live. All of us were supposed to work out of the hall of a suburban flat in Mumbai. Burrp went live on the 15th of Aug, 2006. The company got acquired by Infomedia18 in 2009. While the three of us were there until the exit, there were many rockstars who joined the party, played their part and became amazing contributors to what Burrp stood for – a true kickass consumer product which most companies in India wanted to copy. I have had my own differences of opinion on certain things, but the fact that there was no better consumer facing local listings application in 2009, is not an exaggeration. Well, the company is still around. Very much in business and driven by some kickass people including Anand.

Now lemme tell you about those significant few who played their part and then moved on to pursue their own dreams. Here’s a stream of the Burrp Mafia’s activity for you –

1. Deap Ubhi – Inspired by what Yelp means to consumers and businesses in the US, he wanted Burrp to be an India equivalent. Well, he did succeed to a great extent in doing that. Led the company to its exit in 2009. Later in 2010 he quit the acquiring company for personal reasons to move back to the US. Founded an e-commerce venture there and pivoted to deal-a-day product called Hopscout. He is back in India now, assisting adesi export house in New Delhi backed by a leading VC firm to give them a massive face-lift. I’d spare the details for him to announce.
2. Avlesh Singh (aka me) – Played my part with heart, soul and integrity to give shape toburrp! Local and burrp! TV. Moved on in April, 2010. Founded Webklipper in Oct, 2010. Launched a beta version of WebEngage in May, 2011. Raised first round of capital from angel investors at IAN led by Rajan Anandan, the Vice President of Google India. Ankit Utreja, who was earlier an engineering team lead at burrp, is a co-founder, partner in crime and CTO. WebEngage now powers customer engagement on over 400 websites worldwide including the likes of Cleartrip, Future Group, One97 and Justeat. Raring to go …
3. Santosh Navlani – Joined the Burrp party in 2007. Was stuck in an all engineers team at burrp and had a tough time making all of us understand that selling is important too. Was the default guy we used to play all sort of engineering pranks on. Moved on to have a stint at InMobi. Later co-founded Moneysights with his friend Mukesh. Raised money from Blume Ventures in 2011. Everyone, including my wife, tells me that it is an awesome product and will go a long way in simplifying investments for consumers.
4. Sunit Singh – Bow down people. He enjoys the status of GOD in design circles. Burrp was a for_the_engineer_and_by_the_engineer product until it met his golden touch. His design sense is unmatched. He is my last resort for any help on UI/UX even today. Sunit moved on in 2009 to join Yahoo. He now leads the UI/UX department at Cleartrip. The Cleartrip Mobile site which quickly caught on with its users has his footprints all over the application. He continues to build a great user experience for the company that lives by the same mantra.
5. Sunny Nagpal – I thought selling was about using shitty jargons; until I met him. He brought  in the first significant revenues at Burrp. Moved on in early 2010 to pursue his experiments in the advertising space. He is now the country head and MD of Httpool. Bootstrapped his way and got profitable in less than 6 months time!
6. Nischal Shetty – There’s no better guy than him when it comes to creating mashups. While at Burrp, his small weekend hack called JustUnfollow, a nifty app to unfollow your Twitter followers in bulk, got Techcrunched. Justunfollow in now a massive application. He quit Burrp this year to join a residential incubation program in Chile to pursue his dream run with Buffr – an online application to manage multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts from a single place.
7. Others – A close friend and confidant at Burrp, Aakash Dharmadhikari chose to move on in early 2010 – reason, he fell in love with Ruby overnight! Aakash is now in-charge of training at C42 – a boutique Ruby offshore company in Bangalore. His productRubymonk rose to glory on Hacker News and they are slated to become THE destination for online courses in Ruby. Jay Thaker, who was in charge of selling and business development for burrp! TV, moved on to co-found Sutra HR. Their startup focused hiring product Sutra Lite is his brainchild.

Wow! So many awesome products, so many awesome men – all from a small internet company called Burrp. Ain’t that amazing? Well, yes. For any company, its DNA is important – and at Burrp, hiring across the board was focused on quality. Me and Anand were the only engineers for the first 18 months, not because we did not have the money to hire, but because we couldn’t find a fit to hire. And when we did get a few awesome men on-board, not only did they make huge contributions at Burrp but also created great products and companies later. I am sure, this story will continue to find more such men moving forward. Amen!

I stand by all these men and their ambitions. In some way or the other, they have contributed towards shaping me to what I am today. I wish them luck and will be an evangelist for life for all these people. At WebEngage, we continue to live with the samepassion, DNA and commitment. Our hiring requirements speaks volumes about the kind of gang we are.

Courtesy – BurrpMafia blog

Welcome 2012

Getting digital in this new year!

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

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