On the heels of announcing an impressive array of IIoT testbed result, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) today announced with LTI, a global technology consulting company, and GE Digital a testbed that will deploy early next year, designed to evaluate connected solutions optimize the creation and distribution of solar energy.
The testbed includes LTI’s solution framework for solar plants with GE Digital’s Predix platform integration, and collects and presents data on the status of the plant, including forecasting and analytical capabilities accessed through real time dashboards.
LTI is the sixth largest Indian IT services company (according to NASSCOM), approaching $1B in revenues, with over 22,000 employees, and a commitment to make the world a better place, making this project even more meaningful, and a timely addition to the IIC’s growing range of “real world” testbed deployments.
LTI is part of Larsen & Toubro, which also operates the L&T Solar plant in Rajasthan, India where the testbed is being implemented. L&T has been busy building of some of the largest solar plants in India, including utility scale Grid Connected PV, Concentrating Solar Power (CSP (News - Alert)) and micro-grids and mega rooftop installations. They are a major player in bringing green technologies to India, as the population continues to expand and the demand for clean and renewable energy continues to heat up.
“Utility companies face several issues as global interest in solar energy soars – from mitigating operational and regulatory risks to maintaining efficiencies and improving capacity utilization,” said Rohit Kedia, Chief Business Officer, Manufacturing and ERP, LTI. “With LTI’s expertise in IoT solution deployments coupled with GE Digital’s Predix platform, utility companies now have a technology proving ground to successfully manage the growing demand for solar energy.”
GE Digital’s contribution of the Predix platform will drive the ability to forecast energy requirements, and measure the ability to fulfill and scale based on tracking assets and yield against those assets. Shyam (News - Alert) Varan Nath, Director of Technology Integrations for the IIoT at GE Digital said, “Renewable energy is a transformative solution that will meet energy as well as economic challenges globally. We’re excited to partner with the IIC and LTI on this intelligent platform to help solar plant utilities forecast energy requirements.”
The IIC is a force of nature these days in the evolution of the IIoT where growth is accelerating and advances are hard to keep up with. With a global staff and hundreds of active members, the IIC has focused extensively on testbeds to bring a new measure of practicality and risk management to large scale initiatives.
IIC Executive Director, Dr. Richard Soley said, “Our testbeds, including the new Digital Solar Plant testbed, are where new technologies, applications, products, services and processes - the innovation and opportunities of the industrial Internet - can be initiated, thought through and rigorously tested to ascertain their usefulness and viability before coming to market.”