India lost the solar energy race to China decades ago. The loss can be attributed to the limited technology and infrastructure available to leverage the omnipresent resource. However, the Indian alternative energy industry is rapidly embracing this growing opportunity, and leading this change as a pioneer is Hyderabad-based Shri Shakti Alternative Energy Ltd. (SSAEL), a solar asset management company offering consultancy and technology-driven solutions with a mission to make a sustainable impact.

A clean energy consultant to multilateral global agencies like World Bank, IREDA, UNICEF, UNIDO, ADB, KFW, RERC and many others, SSEAL was incubated 20 years ago by IFC Washington (under the Photo-Voltaic Market Transformation Initiative – PVMTI) with the purpose to blend innovation with solar energy. Led by DV Satya Kumar (Founder & Managing Director), SSEAL has created market transformation in the way the solar sector operates in rooftops, offgrid monitoring, solar

parks and now utility scale O&M, with its services across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu & Uttar Pradesh.

"We are undertaking this mammoth task of monitoring these gigawatts of off-grid installations to help MNRE and State Nodal Agencies make better asset-utilization decisions using bigdata"

Technology Based Solutions
Though the Indian solar market is currently on an unprecedented growth trajectory, long-term performance and sustainability rests on strong solar O&M (Operations & Maintenance) processes. Addressing this issue, SSEAL’s Solarpro (Utility-scale O&M), a unique asset management system based on predictive analysis, helps users monitor realtime performance (in Indian operating conditions) of not only the technical KPIs, but of module cleaning, vegetation management and overall service management as well. Created by the in-house team of NIT and IIT engineers, this interesting combination of data analytics and visualization helps site managers identify existing problems, and accordingly reduce down-time and enhance productivity.

As per IEEFA reports, replacing conventional diesel and electric-powered irrigation pumps with solar pumps can help India achieve 38 percent of its targeted 175 GW renewable energy by 2022. SSEAL lends a hand to this vision through its program SEWA, which facilitates farmers with Sustainable Energy, Water and

Agricultural inputs. SEWA assists MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy) & solar installers to monitor pump performance & farming activities, leveraging big data and cloud technology. It is interesting to note that this unique project was funded by grant from MNRE and the U.S. State Department. Satya asserts, “We are undertaking this mammoth task of monitoring these gigawatts of off-grid installations to help MNRE and State Nodal Agencies make better asset-utilization decisions using big data. The manufacturers and farmers too, streamline operational economies and technical services through this first-time-ever platform”.

A Mission
SSEAL has also developed the first-ever private-public 100 MW solar processing zone in association with the Govt. of Rajasthan near Jaisalmer. Clients are facilitated with a one-stop-solution where they receive developed land in a high irradiation zone with set infrastructure, making it easy to setup solar plants with low operational and transmission costs & losses.

The future of solar energy industry is rapidly spreading into other dimensions such as electric vehicles, unrestricted storage, efficient panels, hybrid systems and improved land/groundwater use, among others. In all of these, SSAEL continues to innovate, to harness new opportunities that can help reduce the society’s dependence on non-renewable energy sources.