New Delhi: The government will launch the National Electricity Data Sharing Framework this month to set out what data power utilities can share and in what structure, Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal said on Wednesday. The framework will bring together data on generation, transmission, distribution, grid operations and power markets, he said, so that power sector players, startups in particular, can plan and take informed decisions.
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Agarwal was speaking at the Brainstorming Conclave on “Making Indian Power Sector AI Enabled,” organised by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). In his address, he urged companies in the power industry to build new applications using artificial intelligence (AI). Such tools can only be developed when data is available, however, and not all data can be made public, he said. Each time a startup asks for data, the government has to decide whether it can be shared at all, which data and how much, Agarwal said, and the framework was drawn up after consultation with stakeholders to settle those questions.
Speaking to reporters later on the sidelines of the event, Agarwal explained what kind of document the framework is. “It’s a model, voluntary framework which is being issued,” he said. “It has been finalised in consultation with the stakeholders.”
The framework also provides for a National Electricity Data Governance Committee. The committee will be led by the Chairperson of the CEA, Agarwal said, and will include representatives of the government as well as public and private sector industry.
The aim, he said, was “to give a starting point to the utilities about data sharing, what kind of data they can share, what should be the metadata structure.” Consistency is what makes large datasets useful to outside developers, Agarwal explained. “Because ultimately if you want the industry, maybe start-ups to utilise this data set, large volumes of data sets, then they have to be consistent,” he said. “It has to be similar in the structure so that it can be gainfully leveraged by them for giving you various decision options.”
Asked about AI-enabled equipment being susceptible to cyber attacks, Agarwal said cyber security and the deployment of AI will go hand in hand. The Union Minister of State for Communication and IT, Jitin Prasada, had made the same point while addressing the event earlier, he said. Control over the code is what he linked to security. “And if we have indigenously developed and deployed artificial intelligence models, particularly applications, then surely we will have a control over codes and if we have a control over codes, probably we can also make them cyber secure,” Agarwal said.
The government already backs some startups in the sector through the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), Agarwal said in reply to a question on support for young companies. “We are already supporting some of the start-ups under RDSS, if I remember correctly,” he said. About 40 such initiatives have been taken up so far, he added. The next step is to pick out the ones that have succeeded and shown good potential, and “we will take them forward,” he said.
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Agarwal was also asked about his meeting with a European Union (EU) delegation on October 11, and whether Indian verifiers could gain parity with European verifiers on carbon pricing. A Director General from the EU had clarified the matter, he said. According to Agarwal, Indian auditors and verifiers “will also get the opportunity to get registered in any of the jurisdictions within the EU.” He pointed to the ISO standards that India has adopted for such entities, saying they “should be in a position to get themselves registered in foreign jurisdictions.”
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