India has always been a large consumer of power backup products because of frequent power outages. The fast pace of urbanisation and digitisation has significantly increased the adoption of UPS and inverter systems across industries.
By Shruti Mishra
Although the condition of power has improved a lot in recent times in India, it is still not sufficient to meet the rapid industrial expansion and the growing intolerance towards unplanned power cuts. There is a belief that with the improvement in the power situation, the market for UPS systems and inverters will eventually get phased out, but industry experts think this will not happen anytime soon.
Today, with increasing disposable incomes, power backup solutions like UPS systems and inverters are no longer confined only to Tier I cities. Their reach has extended to semi-urban and rural areas as well. What’s more, the inclusion of more and more electronic products in our everyday lives, coupled with government initiatives like Smart Cities and Digital India, has acted as a catalyst in increasing the sales of power backup systems.
Market scenario
According to the report titled ‘India Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) Market Outlook, 2023’ by Research and Markets, the market for UPS systems in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 8 per cent during the period 2018-2023. This market is largely dominated by organised players, because their customers are large companies or industries that need good quality and reliable products; however, that’s not the case with the inverter market.
Manish Gokhale, director, offer management, Schneider Electric, says, “The market for inverters in India is highly fragmented and there are a large number of small unorganised players; so the quality of their products gets compromised to a large extent. This is one key challenge the industry is facing today.” However, according to him, despite these challenges the inverter segment is witnessing decent demand in rural India because the purchasing power in these areas is on the rise.
Gokhale adds that the market in India is primarily dependent on UPS systems of up to 25kVA, which constitute over half of the total UPS market. According to him, this segment is going to witness huge demand from the emerging new markets in Tier II and Tier III cities.
Role of regulations and standards
The Research and Markets report also points out that with the introduction of GST and BIS certification, the unorganised sector is getting marginalised because of low profit margins and is therefore shrinking.
Palash Nandy, whose company, Numeric, recently became India’s first UPS system firm to get BIS certification for its 6kVA-10kVA range of products, strongly believes that this certification will be helpful in curbing products that do not comply with quality norms and will create uniformity in terms of standards. “The new notification has made it mandatory for UPS systems of up to 10kVA to be registered with BIS. This is one concrete step towards ensuring the market becomes more uniform in terms of the quality of the products being offered to customers,” he says.
Underlining the benefits of the GST rollout, Gokhale adds, “Earlier we had challenges related to the movement of the product to different states because of the differences in taxation, but with GST, all of that has now got straightened out.”
| Experts’ views and recommendations “The demand for inverters did not grow as expected due to the improvement in the power situation all across the country, over the last financial year. This demand will increase with the introduction of UPS systems that use solar technology. The market has also changed from being product based to using the solutions approach. Customers now look for solutions for their specific requirements; so, today, many systems integrators like us are offering solar rooftop inverter solutions at affordable prices.” —Harsh Vardhan Sharma, AVP – sales, Genus Power Infrastructures Ltd “India has been steadily growing as a market for inverters and UPS systems, since consumers are becoming more and more conscious of their comfort, and do not want to tolerate even a few minutes without power. Factors that are driving the sales of these products are the quality of power as well as the demand and supply gap, since demand is increasing continuously.” —Manoj Jain, vice president, Microtek International Pvt Ltd “The market for UPS systems and inverters in India will see steady and balanced growth in the coming years due to the availability of high quality products at competitive prices. With the inclusion of more and more technology, the efficiency of systems will surely increase and prices will come down. That will make devices more affordable.” —Yogesh Dua, founder and MD, UTL (Fujiyama Power Systems Pvt Ltd) “The government is actively promoting the concept of energy-efficiency. It should also promote and encourage the manufacture of more energy-efficient and environment-friendly UPS systems. I think the local makers of UPS systems have become very strong nowadays and they don’t need any special packages or incentives. What all of us truly need is a level playing field. I am quite happpy that BIS is playing an active role in this scenario. The notification in 2014 made it mandatory for UPS systems of 5kVA to be registered with BIS. This limit has now increased to 10kVA. The unregulated market will now get sorted out with this move.” —Palash Nandy, CEO, Numeric |
Benefits of integrating solar and other technologies
Industry players believe that the integration of solar technology with UPS systems and inverters has opened the doors for many new innovations. They also think that solar inverters will soon replace the normal inverters and UPS systems in the coming years. When asked about this, Yogesh Dua, founder and MD of UTL, says, “The increasing cost of electricity is turning the market away from ordinary power backup systems and towards solar variants.”
Harsh Vardhan Sharma, AVP (sales), Genus Power Infrastructures Ltd, also says that the UPS system and inverter market may soon shift from normal power backup systems to integrated solar systems. “Solar will converge the technologies of net metering and sine wave inverters or UPS systems. Coupling these with communication and software technologies, solutions can be deployed as decentralised solar roof-top energy generators for residential, commercial and various industrial applications,” he says. He adds that since solar energy is being aggressively promoted by the government, the manufacture of solar rooftop inverters may attract good subsidies and buy-back tariffs. In addition, financial institutions are also offering loans for solar solutions at the same interest rate as home loans.
Apart from solar, ‘transformerless’ UPS technology is also fairly established in a key market for UPS systems—data centres. Since space efficiency is becoming increasingly important in data centres, there is a greater usage of modular UPS systems in such industries. Also, the recent push towards smart homes has given a huge momentum to IoT based UPS systems and inverters. With the increasing awareness about the smart home concept, many UPS system and inverter makers are now combining IoT with solar technology to provide more efficient solutions at competitive prices.
