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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has released the latest version of its energy-management solution known as Clever Energy for use with cloud-computing service Google Cloud. This new added feature, according to the company, enables users to leverage Internet of Things (IoT) data from the Clever Energy solution through the suite of cloud-computing services that may already be running on a business's existing system.
The Clever Energy solution has been in use for two years as an energy-conservation measure, TCS reports, enabling companies to improve efficiencies or achieve carbon-neutral status by leveraging IoT data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). In 2020, TCS began investigating a solution to help companies measure, interpret and improve on their energy consumption. The group speculated that a technology-based solution could benefit companies in various industries, ranging from retail to automotive, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, utilities, banking and consumer products.
The solution TCS envisioned would provide an AI- and ML-based cloud solution that can monitor energy consumption, according to Regu Ayyaswamy, Tata Consultancy Services' senior VP of IoT and digital engineering. The system would leverage sensors to capture data regarding energy usage, and it would use AI and ML technologies to provide recommendations related to how a company could optimize its energy usage across industrial sites, stores or other buildings.
Testing the System on Tata's Own Facilities
"When we started working on an IoT-based solution to measure energy," Ayyaswamy recalls, "our [chief finance officer] at that time asked me, 'Why don't you first deploy the solution for our own TCS facilities?'" The company, headquartered in Mumbai, operates almost 135 sites in India, along with buildings and campuses located around the world, which collectively consume a significant amount of energy. A building in Chennai, where his work is performed, measures 4.4 million square feet alone, while the company's locations, in aggregate, span approximately 25 to 30 million square feet of space throughout India.
Regu Ayyaswamy
The climate in many parts of the country requires air conditioning year-round, which accounts for only some of the energy demand. "Also, we have office lighting and the data centers," Ayyaswamy says, equating to around 500 million kilowatt hours of energy being consumed. "We decided to put this solution to work [in-house] to know the exact, various sources of energy usage," he recalls, and to measure the data collected from building automation and management systems deployed in the company's buildings. That information is managed at a data-operating center, he says, "where we can understand the energy consumption and merge some interesting additional data into the system."
The company captures occupancy data from the access-control system to understand how many individuals are located on a particular floor or in a specific meeting room at any given time. The Clever Energy platform provides dashboards that help management determine how much air conditioning or lighting energy is consumed at those times under certain conditions, and how that could be adjusted according to the number of people onsite, or based on the weather.
The system has helped the company to benchmark different offices in separate cities, as well as compare and contrast the data and obtain recommendations according to that information. "We built a lot of such visualization, as well as building analytics," says Mehal Shah, the head of TCS's Clever Energy division. With the data, he explains, managers can answer questions like "How can we improve energy consumption?" and "How can we use ambient conditions and occupancy data to determine optimum load?" Based on internal benefits, Ayyaswamy says, the CFO had another recommendation: "Why don't we take this to our own customers who need similar solutions?"
Adding Google Cloud Platform
Mehal Shah
Clever Energy is now used globally by retailers, government agencies, manufacturing sites and office buildings. This year, the company is aiming for greater accessibility for those seeking easy integration, by launching the solution on the Google Cloud platform. Many businesses are shifting to cloud-based systems and are using Google Cloud to enable that transformation. In that way, energy-management companies can offer a platform-as-a-service or software-as-a-service model, allowing developers an accelerated design period.
In addition, Google Cloud can provide businesses with the flexibility to add more functionality, as well as cost savings when it comes to IT efforts by building owners or management. The cloud-based services make it possible to tailor solutions specific to an industry, the company adds. For instance, manufacturing companies and retailers both seek energy usage and consumption data, but they have very different facilities, and solutions would vary considerably as well. "The beauty of a cloud solution," Shah states, "is that you can keep expanding it, and the platform remains the same."
Flexibility can include other sensor data beyond energy consumption. The primary information the system collects is consumption data from smart meters, Shah explains, but it also records ambient conditions in some cases. For example, some pharmaceutical companies capture air-quality parameters to meet regulatory requirements, such as limiting the amount of carbon dioxide particles. The platform is versatile, he says, so depending on users' needs, they can select and onboard new sensors or IoT protocol devices, as well as choose the data requirements for their dashboard.
Leveraging Various IoT Systems on One Platform
TCS does not provide sensors, and the software platform is designed to be technology-agnostic. The system can manage data from sensors that use wireless protocols ranging from Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to Wi-Fi, 5G, LTE, LoRaWAN or NB-IoT, as well as BACNet and Modbus. "Our platform can support multiple protocols, depending upon the customer requirements," Shah says. If a customer has existing sensors at its facilities, such as wireless energy meters, or existing building-management systems collecting energy-consumption data, the Clever Energy solution can consolidate that data and provide analytics.
If a customer lacks sensors, TCS can visit that site to identify what sensors would be required for a specific application, as well as the wireless gateways to receive and manage sensor data. The user or developer could then purchase the necessary hardware, or TCS could acquire the hardware for them. Additionally, Shah says, "We can actually design the gateway and go install the gateway also on the customer's side." The collected data is stored on a common cloud-based server, he adds, so large companies with multiple facilities can remotely view the conditions at each site in real time.
The primary benefit for users, according to Ayyaswamy, is that they can gain visibility into energy data on a daily or hourly basis. That information, he says, will become increasingly important, not only for cost savings, but for meeting sustainability initiatives. For instance, the system might identify that a chiller load could be reduced during hours when people were not onsite. Such data analysis could then lead to reduced energy use.
Based on analytics from the ML algorithms, TCS says those using the Clever Energy solution have reduced their energy consumption by 8 to 12 percent. Following a new deployment, businesses can thus reduce emissions under what TCS calls "scope one" and "scope two" of the Clever Energy strategy. Scope three, Ayyaswamy explains, will be to reach a carbon-neutral status. In the meantime, the company is expanding its solution to a wider set of users, including the metal industry for furnace management, or refineries and other oil and gas companies.
Key Takeaways:
- The Clever Energy solution has brought greater energy efficiency to Tata Consultancy Services' India-based buildings.
- The solution, being offered to companies globally, now comes with Google Cloud for easier implementations.
