Power Play

Keeping in mind the criticality of the business of power transmission and
distribution, Reliance Power Transmission (Reliance Energy) has realigned its IT
set-up to upgrade distribution and service qualities matching current demands
and scenario. To attain this, RPTL has introduced some business enabling
technologies in the last couple of years.

Is IT the Secret?

In order to integrate all its processes, Reliance Energy has implemented SAP
ERP of late. With this over 20 lakh consumers have been migrated to the SAP ISU
platform replacing the traditional billing system. "This was the first step
towards modernizing our IT infrastructure. We are now looking forward to some
more technology deployments in other areas that will enable business
transformation results in the areas of power procurement and power trading,"
says Prasenjit Mukherjee, GM, IT infrastructure & operations, Reliance Energy.

The company is planning to deploy BI application that will help to forecast
power requirements in various localities under its range. "Availability of power
largely depends on weather. Since we dont have any control over nature,
generation of power keeps on fluctuating depending upon weather conditions,"
explains Mukherjee. "However, we can do something towards storage and
distribution of power in case we have some knowledge about the power consumption
patterns. Herein, BI can help a lot," he adds. By using a BI tool, Reliance is
planning to get a forecast for the next three or six months power usage and
requirement patterns based on historical data of previous years. This data will
help the company to plan efficient and uninterrupted power supply for consumers.
However, the main challenge herein is that it has to go for a solution that can
give results based on Indian conditions.

The company has further implemented Data Leakage Protection (DLP) and GIS
applications. The GIS application enabled Reliance to map the entire area
covering its electricity distribution network. "Apart from this, we also have
deployed an Outage Management System application as well as Supervisory Control
& Data Acquisition (SCADA)," informs Mukherjee. The company is now integrating
OMS, SCADA and GIS along with SAP to obtain the best results. This integrated
system will help to generate geographical data for identifying failures and
problem areas, map power requirement patterns, trace fault locations and power
availability status that will help Reliance to fine-tune its power distribution
and serve customers efficiently and proactively.

Save Energy

The company is focusing on green IT through various initiatives within the
organization. "Being in the energy sector, we understand the importance of
efficient use of power very well. Hence, we are trying to contribute our bit
towards energy conservation," says Mukherjee. The company has been deploying
solutions to reduce paper and ink consumption and recycle cartridges and toners.
"We also conduct regular in-house training to generate awareness among employees
apart from building an Intranet portal for all kinds of internal communications
or circulations instead of sending printed copies," he says. The company has
also consolidated its server set-up with SAP implementation and is looking at
desktop virtualization in the near future.

Piyali Guha

piyalig@cybermedia.co.in