Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Power is one of the major cost overheads for our company and continues to increase every year posing a threat to our profitability. Currently power costs account for ~7% of the company’s total indirect cost and 2% of the revenue. Of the various businesses, Data centers (both India and International) ATM centres account for more than 50% of the company’s power cost.

To improve the profitability of the company we endeavor to reduce this cost by at least 25%. Can you suggest ways on how this ambition can be achieved?

Following ideas are already under consideration-
1.Wind power procurement.
2. Power tariff conversion from commercial to industrial. The tariff in industrial category is lesser by 10-15%.
3. Thermal storage solution - This saves based on the differentiation between day and night tariffs.
4. Solar power.
5. Power purchase through energy exchange). This is already implemented
6. UPS communization- Currently, multiple UPSs are installed in locations. These are provided on each data centre floor which results into low utilization. Under the communization program, we shall install common bank on the ground floor and feed each data centre hall from there which will result in freeing up multiple UPS banks saving on CAPEX (Capital expenditure) and OPEX (Operational Expenditure) substantially.

We are for innovative ideas to reduce our power costs incurred specifically for data centers (global i.e., India, US, UK, Singapore, Canada and Japan) and ATMs by:
-Improving the efficiency of current power systems
-Using alternative sources of energy

The solutions should have a maximum three year payback period (i.e. the Capex incurred to implement the ideas should be recovered by cost savings in at most three year duration).

The ideas already under consideration need not be mentioned.

Thanking you for your innovative strategies and best practices shared