News

DC Power Initiatives push into South Asia

July 23, 2014 by Jeff Shepard

The EMerge Alliance today announced it will start teaming with local organizations and launched a new Industrializing membership category to bring the benefits of dc microgrids to industrializing countries in South Asia. According to EMerge Alliance President Brian Patterson, the expansion of the group's dc power initiative into South Asia will help bring reliable power to countries with known power stability issues to prevent the high occurrence of interrupted supply from affecting commercial, industrial and residential users of electricity. It will also allow great numbers of people who have no electrical power an opportunity to become a productive part of the electrified world economic community.

“This region has one of the highest incidences of grid failure in the industrialized world due to the region’s lack of supply to match demand resulting from its high industrial, economic and population growth,” said Patterson. “Not only are grid-connected dc microgrids believed to be the best solution to many of these supply and demand interruption problems, but off-grid dc microgrids are believed to be the best solution to supply electricity to the presently un-served, rural, low-income populations in the region.”

The EMerge Alliance South Asian Industrializing Region (EASAIR) chapter will be led locally by Arun George and Vinay Agarwal serving as chair and vice chair, respectively. Both are executives with Novo Technologies, an Indian firm specializing in LED lighting dc lighting fixtures, ZigBee-enabled lighting fixtures, intelligent lighting fixtures, stretched fabric lighting ceilings, and so on.

“DC power distribution has a lot to offer the people and businesses in this region, and the EMerge Alliance is strategically positioned to help make it a reality,” said George. “We’re looking forward to working with the Alliance to improve power reliability and drive rural electrification in South Asia.”

In order to support technical professionals and building product manufacturers in this and other developing regions bring dc solutions into being, the Alliance has launched a new Industrializing membership category to offer access to regional and global Alliance activities and standards.

The new Industrializing membership category offers four levels of regional membership, including Participating, General, Corresponding Company and Corresponding Individual. Organizations in the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the first to be named to the new Industrializing category.

Membership in the Alliance, for participation in this and its other standards initiatives, is open to all. Companies and organizations headquartered and principally doing their commerce in these countries are eligible to join one of the Industrializing membership levels. Multinational companies with operations outside these countries may join using one of the Alliance’s Global Membership categories.