— Anoop Nanda, Managing Director - South Asia, South East Asia & Japan, Electrical Sector - Eaton Corporation

Eaton Corporation is a diversified power management company with a presence in more than 150 countries. In an exclusive interaction with Team Electrical Monitor, Anoop Nanda and Eric Franks discuss critical issues in India's power sector and explain how Eaton plans to contribute meaningfully to India's power ambitions and economic growth.

What is your overall view on the Indian power sector?
India has more demand than supply of power. Besides, India has significant losses on the distribution side. Looking at the goals of the power plan of India, there is alternate electricity, which includes a vast plan and commitment to solar.

This has further increased the challenges as far as grid stability is concerned. At the same time India is trying to attack issues which are going to be challenging, but that keeps Eaton in a good spot because it gives us the opportunity to orchestrate our viability through the our products.

What are the key areas in power distribution where Eaton looks forward to serve?
We play in the sub-40,000 volts category. We are proud of the fact that we don't use SF6 in any of our ring main units which is 40,000 volts and below. It is important to have an alternate to SF6. If you look at our global distribution sector, we are number one in North America in power distribution. Globally, we are number two in the power quality, and again No.1 in power quality in China.

India is adding significant capacity through off-grid and grid connected renewables. How do see Eaton serving the increasing complexities of the grid?
Well, off-grid solar applications don't really cause any problem for the grid. For instance, water heaters using off-grid solar energy are not causing any problem to the grid.

Large grid-based solar applications, already in EU, will now begin in India under the National Solar Mission Program. The quality of the product that you are using in terms of harmonic generation in terms of stability that they can maintain becomes more important. One doesn't want to create instability to a grid which is already weak. This is the reason people opt to go for high, elite brands or one which are globally tested, gone through quality process, tested in several countries like our solar inverters, etc.

We will be launching high rated inverters which would a capacity of 1.5 mw for large solar farms. We will bring Eaton's full technological capacity together with inverters or balance of systems. The engineering services will overlay to knit everything together. This will become more crucial for customers and utilities at large and we think they get more confident with brands like Eaton running their projects.

Coming to India's power sector ambition, there is a keen focus on the T&D sector. What is your view?
Traditionally in India, as an emerging economy, demand has always out-shook supply. It is about catching up. The government has done quite well in the last couple of plans. The speed is increasing and the volume of short comings has come down, which means the progress has been made.

The new plans where 100,000 mw added to an installed base of 150 GW or 160 GW over the next five years is considerable a good amount of generating capacity. The ratio commonly used between the dollars of generating capacity translated into T&D global environment is 1 to 1.5 and in India it is 1:1. So if T&D has lagged, the generating capacity it only adds a testimony to the difficulty faced by people. That's where Eaton comes in light. Where backup power conditioning is required, our equipment like UPS comes in. We also provide equipment for process control applications, critical application systems for data centers, hospitals.

Share your out look on smart grid systems and what Eaton has to contribute .
The definition of smart grid is still off India because it's a new idea. Smart grid technology is basically an intelligent and automated brain to maximize the efficiency of grid power and its use, whether it is a multiple source at the grid levels or a demand side management at the consumption level. Through Smart Grid, you will get the visibility of how power demand is varying throughout the day, how the sources of energy are working whether there is enough solar light or whether the day is going to be windy or not, with all types of software running through all the units and communications taking place from starting to end point.

Well, Eaton does provide home-based smart grid type inverter which would switch back and forth between solar and utility grid. Inside the house it automatically reduces the air conditioning when a person leaves the room; the system will automatically start 20 minutes before person would return back (if the timing is stored) this is one of the characteristics of smart grid system.

Do you perceive fears of a slowdown?
We will repeal that mega trend because the population is increasing. Emerging economies are getting more powerful and are getting wealthier; demand of energy per capita usage will rise. We are optimistic about the future.

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