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Published on: 3/30/2009
Last Visited: 9/15/2009
Uttaranchal Power Corporation Ltd., (UPCL)'s DGM-IT, Jayant Sinha said that the total installed capacity (MW) of electricity in India as on Dec 31, 2008 was 1,47,402 MW, including the contribution of the Central Sector (48,971 MW), State Sector (76,185 MW) and Private Sector (22,246 MW).
"Much remains to be done as the demand has consistently outstripped supply leading to an overall energy shortage of about 9% and peak shortage of about 16%," he added.
Sinha opined that the States, through APDRP, had implemented various reform initiatives particularly in the Power Distribution sector, with a focus on improving operational efficiency, increasing commercial viability, curbing thefts, stricter energy accounting and providing better consumer services.
Sinha found that enforcing legislation and policy within the framework of the Indian Electricity Act, 2003, and the active role played by some of the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions had helped in augmenting growth.
From UPCL's point of view certain technological deployments such as ATP (any-time payment), updating databases, Web-based MIS to capture key data related to finance, commercial, operations, project and HR in all the circles have increased operational efficiency.
"We deployed a business analytics software application for analyzing, monitoring and reporting of the billing data of high-value key consumers, having sanctioned load greater than 25 KW and contributing nearly two-thirds of the total revenue for UPCL," maintained Sinha.
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Jayant Sinha
UPCL
While Sinha does not foresee any significant impact of the economic slowdown in the power sector with demand being inelastic in nature, he does not rule out aligning IT solutions with business needs, internal capacity building being the biggest challenge.
"Since fresh recruitments are few and far between, the task of training an ageing and computer-agnostic workforce is a real challenge, besides process re-engineering being another major challenge for any enterprise-wide IT implementation," he said.
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"The hardware included RISC servers, EPIC servers and Xeon servers for different applications, besides deploying the WAN, a managed leased line network and secured IPSec VPN, while conventional Ethernet technology supports the corporate LAN," said Sinha.
UPCL initiated its network security roll out to be implemented with a combination of Firewall, Proxy Server, User/ Group policies and end-to-end anti-virus/anti-spam protection with content filtering.
Sinha decided that storage system needed to be managed by a SAN-supported RAID L5 implementation, with a LTO-2 system for automated data backups.
For UPCL, the use of IT tools has aided in faster and reliable data access, availability of structured information and efficient MIS reporting.
According to Sinha, the IT tools have also been effective in the capture, analysis and reporting of key performance parameters in all operational areas, enhancing the quality of decisions.
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"As UPCL is preparing the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for central plan funding under Restructured APDRP, IT investment will be an integral part of the larger business model, and it cannot be treated in isolation," said Sinha.
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"If an IT system is able to energize users into loving their business and acts as a catalyst to process reforms and business productivity, then I think my aspirations are more than fulfilled," remarked Sinha.
Sinha intends to leverage the restructured APDRP under the XI plan to promote strategic business solutions with significant IT interventions.
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