Thursday, March 28, 2024

Inverters Eyeing Rural Homes

About 75-80 per cent of the rural India is untouched, offering a huge opportunity for sales of economical and user-friendly inverters and UPS -- Uma Gupta

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Thankfully, inverters and UPS will soon be covered under the standards and labelling (S&L) programme of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency(BEE). The S&L programme will empower manufacturers to self-certify the products by adopting approval testing procedures.

Renewable energy systems. Renewable energy systems help to generate and save the power. Integration of these technologies with upcoming innovations will target new potential markets with more energy efficiency.

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The key to success is a robust and reliable design that can withstand steep ἀuctuations and high voltages up to 440 volts and phase-to-phase input in rural areas

—Sanjeev Garg, executive director, PEP Infot

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Rural markets. “About 75-80 per cent of the rural market in India is untouched. There is a huge opportunity for economical and user-friendly inverters in rural area,” informs N.K. Mishra, chairman and managing director, Ekta Telecommunication & Systems.

Battery disposal. Inverter batteries have disposal issues. Safe disposal of used batteries is necessary as these contain toxic elements that can harm the environment. This problem can be solved by improving the technology to recycle the batteries. The used batteries should end up only with the authorised recyclers.

“As per the newly proposed guidelines for battery disposal, the entire responsibility rests with the sellers. Instead of putting all the responsibility of battery disposal on the manufacturer’s network, it should be a collective responsibility of society as a whole. There should be some compulsions on the buyers’ side as well. Otherwise, it would either be harsh for manufacturers or unimplementable,” feels Dua.

There is a need to create awareness amongst dealers, distributors, channel partners and customers about safe disposal of used batteries as per battery management and handling rules of the government.

With improvements in the inverter design, however, the life of batteries is increasing, which is decreasing the menace of battery disposal bulk slowly. Also, increasing use of LED lights will increase the battery life substantially.

Way to go
The government can encourage R&D and innovation by way of reducing taxes on R&D and innovative products, particularly green energy products. In particular, it should:
1. Reduce the value-added tax on inverters in all states to 4 per cent from 13.5 per cent as this product is not a luxury item and it improves the infrastructure substantially.
2. Set up some more test labs in northern India to promote R&D for rugged design.
3. Give further incentives to promote usage of solar inverters with LED lighting output as these are eco-friendly.

Su-Kam has implemented an open platform to foster the culture of innovation. A motivation with new ways of collaborative creation and exchange of ideas generates new methods and ideas for making the product more efficientand unique.

The government, on its part, can play a seminal role in innovation by investment in R&D. Laying the right business conditions for innovations generated in India will make the investment done in R&D economically feasible as profit are generated.


The author is an executive editor at EFY

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