Interview with Dwijadas Basak, General Manager, Tata Power Delhi Distribution, India

What are the current challenges for utilities in the industry, specifically looking at India?
The greatest challenge in the Indian power distribution sector is high T&D losses along with poor collection efficiency. The national average T&D loss is around 26-27%.

Another is the absence of cost reflective tariffs, resulting in huge revenue gaps for the discoms. There are also huge cross subsidies built into the existing tariff structure. Electricity costs are also increasing and have increased by nearly 80% in the last 4 years due to increases in the price of fuel – in India the power purchase cost comprises 75-80% of total retail tariff, and 67% of power generation is from thermal sources.

Then there is the unwillingness of government to privatize this sector, and its intervention in the functioning of regulatory bodies.

Do you see any specific challenges in Asia?
Reasonable costs of fuel/electricity and lack of availability of coal (both quality and quantity) in Asia is a concern, and increasing coal prices in the international market is leading to increases in power purchase costs.

What’s your vision for the industry looking forward?
In the Indian context my vision for this sector is the following:

Interview with Oliver Iltisberger, Executive VP Asia Pacific, Landis+Gyr, Australia

What are the main challenges the utility industry is facing currently, and do you see any specific challenges in Asia?

Exclusive interview with Andrew Strachan, Head: Energy & Natural Resources, SAP South Africa, gold sponsor at African Utility Week 2013 and sponsor of the CEO Forum.

What are you most excited about currently in terms of SAP’s products and solutions?
SAP is serious about growing and investing into the greater Africa region, and has dedicated the most senior resources to formalizing an ambitious “$1 billion by 2017” strategy for the region.

SAP’s five pillar strategy is helping businesses of all sizes run better and innovate sustainably using SAP solutions that include applications, analytics, mobile, cloud, database and technology. The mid-term objectives are to reach €20 billion in sales by 2017, of which €2 billion comes from the cloud. In addition, SAP aims at reaching 1 billion SAP users by 2015, and becoming the industry’s fastest growing database for in-memory computing via SAP HANA.

There are more than 650 million mobile subscribers on African soil. The potential is enormous and SAP aims at leading mobile adoption in the enterprise space, “Mobility is the new desktop.”

What opportunities do you see in Africa?
In an African continent of accelerated change, we are at an inflection point. Companies today need to be able to react and adapt rapidly to this change. SAP innovations are helping the world run better by enabling our 232,000 customers to run more efficiently, be closer to their own customers, motivate their employees, gain real time insight into their businesses, and optimize scarce resources. Our innovations matter to our customers. Our innovations matter to people. Our innovations matter to Africa and the world.
 
SAP will continue to invest in countries in Africa, in which we expect significant growth and we aim to expand our market share in those countries. Africa is one of the fastest developing regions in the world and businesses, particularly utilities are looking to expand rapidly and improve efficiency, flexibility, agility, transparency and gain rapid insight into their business at an affordable cost. SAP is perfectly positioned to help the utilities sector address those needs, speed-up innovation and help transform their business.

What do you think makes SAP competitive in this market?  
SAP for the sixth consecutive year has been ranked the software sector leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, as announced in October 2012. Based on economic, environmental and social criteria, SAP achieved a total score of 84%, showing an 8% improvement since the 2011 results were announced. Included in both the World and Europe Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, SAP increased its scores in all three sustainability areas. For economic, the company moved up to 87% from 81% in 2011. At 85%, environmental saw a 13% point improvement and social rose from 72 to 79% in the past year.

It is not only about enabling customers to save energy; on the home front, SAP has committed to reduce its total global greenhouse gas emissions back to the levels of 2000 by 2020. This equates to lowering emissions by about 50% from 2007 levels. Since 2007, SAP has lowered its emissions by more than 25%.

What benefits does SAP bring to the utilities industry?