The maiden Budget of the NDA government under the leadership of Narendra Modi proposed 100 Smart Cities and allocated a huge fund of Rs 7,060 crore (USD 1.17 billion approx) for the same.
In order to achieve this goal, the government and civic bodies have to work aggressively to address the prime concerns like energy crisis and infrastructure issues.
The swelling population and the rapid industrialization are already putting pressure on the country’s resources. India can no longer afford to import fossil fuels to meet its future energy demands. In this context, the primary focus of the 100 Smart Cities projects should be to achieve energy independence by promoting renewable energy sources like solar and wind and energy management technologies like smart grid, smart water management, and others.
The current scenario, however, presents a bleak future for the project. A recent report, “ICT in Urban Governance – Survey” by India Infrastructure Research reveals that 80 percent of the civic agencies in the proposed smart cities allocate less than 1 percent of their budget to ICT. With ICT playing a crucial role in smart city projects, this figure points fingers at the challenges ahead for Indian cities to achieve Smart City status.
Also, the survey shows that only 28 percent of civic agencies have adopted smart water and waste management techniques. Amongst core services, water and sewage management systems have been adopted by more than 30 percent. SCADA, the popular smart grid solution, is deployed by more than 40 percent. Around 60 percent of cities have either implemented or are considering SCADA and rooftop solar integration.
The current scenario also implies that there are lots of opportunities to be exploited, and so it presents windfall opportunities for providers in ICT, energy management and green tech solutions.
Solar energy market in India has already attracted several leading players like Suntech, First Solar, SunPower, and many more. With projects like smart cities taking shape, more companies are expected to transform India as one of their strategic markets. Off-grid solar providers and concentrated solar companies will also benefit from this move.
While wind farms may not direct link to the proposed smart cities, wind power generation is crucial to bring success to the project. India, along with China, is projected to supply half of the global energy demand growth through 2040, and wind constitutes a major component in this energy reserve. Wind currently meets nearly 67 percent of the total grid-connected renewable energy capacity in the country, and more growth is expected from the onshore and offshore wind projects lined up across the country.
Another area of clean tech implementation in smart cities is street lighting. LED lights will replace fluorescent and incandescent bulbs in streets and smart homes. India LED market is likely to witness a revolution with smart city movement.
In smart meter deployment, India has shown poor performance among global leaders. With just over 200 million smart meters deployed, India’s total smart meter deployment comprises less than one percent of the total meter deployment. With smart meter being one of the integral component in smart city development, opportunities are enormous.
Anil Chaudhry, president and country head, Schneider Electric, agrees that global energy management companies like Schneider Electric are well positioned to bridge the deficit between the vision and ground reality of creating 100 Smart Cities as the company has already implemented similar solutions in other geographies.
“The help of Smart City specialists could play a key role in ensuring ICT and IT outlays are used judiciously and not left unspent,” Chaudhry added.
ICT players can also support energy management by providing applications like GPS-enabled handsets for grid inspection; GPS-based load management and outage management; education management; street light management; water management; passenger information systems; rooftop solar integration; GPS-based billing; and power quality monitoring.
The Smart City 100 projects goes hand-in-hand with the Clean India campaign launched recently.
Commenting on the importance of adopting ICT and green technologies to achieve the smart city goals, Chaudhry said, “Successful implementation by other cities should, however, inspire the laggards to opt for faster adoption of ICT solutions, which will play a key role in existing cities as well as in creating greenfield Smart Cities.”
Rajani Baburajan