Last week Honeywell and Tata Power Delhi Distribution (TPDDL) announced that they have successfully implemented the first ever, automated demand response (ADR) project for commercial and industrial facilities in India.

TPDDL is using Honeywell technology and services to link more than 160 buildings in its distribution network, and require temporary reductions in energy use when demand threatens to outpace supply. This includes power management during periods of peak consumption, in addition to other grid emergency situations. ADR gives the grid operator a new, domestic resource to help alleviate stress on transmission and distribution lines, and improve supply efficiency.

India’s utilities often pay extremely high prices for peak power and struggle to keep up with growing electricity demand that threatens to overwhelm the country’s power generation capacity. The rapidly developing nation is also striving to reduce the massive inefficiencies and theft present within the power sector, as well as to bolster reliability of a system that experiences common power outages. Major crises like the infamous 2012 blackout left nearly half the country’s 1.2 billion people without power.

With nearly 50% of the country's peak load tied to commercial and industrial sites, the ability to adjust related energy use is critical. Grid operators like TPDDL can use ADR to help reduce peak load in a facility 15% on average, creating a "virtual power plant" that generates "negawatts" or reduced demand.

The project will give TPDDL the ability to reduce approximately 11.5 megawatts of peak demand. Experts have calculated that if the same technology were to be deployed in all buildings in India, ADR could provide up to 10.5 gigawatts of droppable power, close to 7% of the peak energy currently required nationwide.

"This is a significant initiative; one that supports our mission to build a resource-efficient, environmentally friendly electrical grid," said Mr. Praveer Sinha, CEO & ED of Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd. "We are committed to making this deployment a success, and finding new opportunities to extend ADR to other customers, thus playing a role in helping to meet Delhi's energy needs. We believe our steps in this direction will also encourage other Indian utilities to adopt smart grid technology for efficient operations".

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TPDDL is using Honeywell's Akuacom software as a service (SaaS) and smart meters to communicate with the building systems at the participating sites. The system will automatically apply the load-shed measures in case of overburden on the grid.

Honeywell India president Anant Maheshwari said: "TPDDL is steering the country toward a smarter, more dynamic electrical grid where utilities and their customers collaborate to solve broad challenges. This project will help support the development and expansion of smart grid solutions in India".

India and China have represented huge growth markets for Honeywell in recent years. While perhaps unsurprising (considering the strength of growth in the two Asian powerhouses) the figures stand as testament to Honeywell’s penetration of these emergent markets.

“China and India to me are like the two rocket boosters on the big engine of Honeywell because together it is not what percent of sales they have, but what contribution to growth they have. Together they are nearly 30% of the growth contribution of the company. So, all the goodness and the performance of Honeywell over the past ten years more than half of it is coming from India, China and the rest that were built on top of that foundation”, said Shane Tedjarati, global high growth regions president, Honeywell, in an interview last month.

In 2014, the OpenADR Alliance, a association of approximately 100 firms applying the standard, announced a partnership with the India Smart Grid Forum, a union of private companies and India’s Ministry of Power that was created to boost the adoption of smart grid technology.

India represents huge ADR opportunities and developments aren’t limited to Delhi. In Mumbai, utility firm Reliance Infrastructure has partnered with U.S. start-up Innovari on an ADR pilot project. While smaller than Honeywell’s Dheli project, both are partially funded by grants from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which has played a big role in bringing US players like General Electric and IBM into the nation’s initial smart grid development.

This all comes as part of a smart grid revolution on the sub-continent. Led by local IT giants such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata, India is undergoing a wholesale IT transformation within the power sector. 14 regional smart grid projects were launched in 2013, and many more are expected in the coming years.