Helping Balance India’s Energy Trilemma

On the company’s relevance a decade from now: Currently, Fourth Partner Energy is helping balance India’s energy trilemma by providing energy security, energy equity (energy affordability and energy accessibility) and environment sustainability. In India, the demand for electricity is growing by 6 per cent p.a., while on the supply side we have not been able to match up the pace. Moreover, with improvement in technology not only have we been able to bring down the price but also are able to accommodate greater capacities for a given space.

Picture this, over the past five years, the electricity tariff in most states has increased by over 25 per cent, while the cost of setting up solar power plants has reduced by over 50 per cent. Today, solar energy is financially viable across 17 states in India (comparing industrial tariffs). Soon we will also be expanding our operations to international waters. In the coming years, we look forward to tapping into energy storage solutions and building supporting infrastructure for electric vehicles. I feel in 10 years from now, Fourth Partner Energy would be amongst one of the most credible players in distributed energy and renewable space not only in India but globally as well.

On the future of the business: The business opportunity in the distributed solar space is still very lucrative. Currently, we sit on an installed base of 1.2 GW while the government of India has set an aggressive goal of achieving 40 GW of installed base by 2022. Even if we were to achieve 25 per cent of the set goal by 2022, we are talking about the industry growing 10 times from its current base.

On the importance of AI and blockchain to the business: AI and blockchain are yet to prove their metal in the distributed solar space but on the utilities and energy front, AI and IoT can help create significant value. Network of connected sensors throughout appliances and devices can use machine learning to gauge, learn and anticipate user behaviours and autonomously control a building’s energy for optimised consumption. This should ultimately help balance the supply and demand of large-scale energy grids.