Indian utility Tata Power has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with research institute the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi to collaborate on smart grid technology and clean energy.

Considering the large number of experts with their excellence in different fields in IIT Delhi and Tata Power, there is potential to collaborate between academia, research and domain experts from business with a high transformational impact.

Both the institutions have agreed to work together to identify projects that can be transformed from R&D stage to pilot projects and scaling in areas such as EV infrastructure, artificial intelligence, machine learning, hydrogen technologies, battery energy storage systems, monitoring and sensing, and microgrids.

“IIT Delhi, a leading research institution in the country, is pleased to sign this MoU with Tata Power,” said V Ramgopal Rao, director of IIT Delhi. “I am hopeful this collaboration will result in the development of new technologies for the energy sector, which would prove helpful in area of power generation and distribution.”

Praveer Sinha, CEO of Tata Power, added: “At Tata Power, our focus has always been around bringing ground-breaking and sustainable technologies in the power sector. We are glad to partner with IIT Delhi, an institution of eminence. We are confident that this collaboration will create a test bed for new age implementable technologies in the energy space leading to strengthening of clean energy ecosystem in the country.”

In the past few years, Tata Power has fostered a culture of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship within the organisation for its employees to design, develop and deliver energy products and services.

Tata Power and IIT have also agreed to explore the possibility to develop Tata Power’s virtual centre of excellence towards complementing and supplementing various technologies, labs and infrastructure already at each other’s facilities. Under this MoU, both parties wish to explore the synergies through cooperation with the Clean Energy International Incubation Centre (CEIIC) and IIT Delhi’s start-up infrastructure for incubation and development of start-ups.

CEIIC, is supported by Social Alpha, Tata Trusts and the government of India through its department of biotechnology, Birac and Tata Power.

Tata Power through its collaboration, innovation and R&D division has collaborated with more than 100 national and international technology and institution partners to develop low cost, scalable technology in the clean energy space.

Tata Power is one of India’s largest integrated power companies and with its subsidiaries and jointly controlled entities has an installed and managed capacity of 13,061MW. The company has presence across the entire power value chain – generation of renewable as well as conventional power including hydro and thermal energy, transmission and distribution, coal and freight, logistics and trading.

IIT Delhi is one of 23 IITs created to be national centres of excellence for training, research and development in science, engineering and technology in India. Established as College of Engineering in 1961, the institute was later declared as an institution of national importance and was renamed Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Since its inception, more than 50,000 have graduated from IIT Delhi.