IBM announced it had acquired Bengaluru-based renewables company Prescinto. This acquisition will enhance the capabilities of IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS), its solution for asset lifecycle management. IBM said it will further its leadership in the energy and utility space. Globally, water, natural gas, oil, nuclear, and other energy and utility enterprises have already utilised IBM MAS.
According to the International Energy Agency, renewable electricity generation will increase by almost 90% by 2030. As more organisations turn to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, they also need to adapt to managing the performance of high-tech devices like turbines, solar panels, and inverters.
Effectively managing and maximising the performance of high-tech devices like turbines, solar panels, and inverters, which generate power from renewable energy assets, can be daunting. In addition, environmental factors like weather and debris can contribute to reducing energy output, system effectiveness, and system uptime. According to Allied Market Research, the value of the global utility asset management market is expected to grow from $4.3 billion in 2022 to $12.4 billion in 2031, with a CAGR of 11.3 per cent.
Prescinto provides asset performance management (APM) software-as-a-service (SaaS) for renewables and leverages AI to enable advanced monitoring, analytics, and automation, streamlining renewable energy operations and managing clean energy and storage assets.
Users can track and monitor the performance of solar, wind, and energy storage assets in near real-time, identify root causes for underperformance, and recommend actions to optimise generation.
For example, a solar power plant can become less efficient over time due to accumulated dirt and debris on its panels. Renewable APM software can use visual recognition capabilities to help monitor these assets, identify issues before they become critical, and prompt the necessary actions to restore optimal efficiency. This would allow for real-time tracking of panel performance, streamline required cleaning, and enable organisations’ prompt response before energy output decreases.
Prescinto, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Bangalore, works with and services global customers across 14 countries with 16 GigaWatts under management. It offers capabilities including data capture by employing open-source protocols and a data governance layer, monitoring features for centralised visualisation of assets with high-definition maps, real-time monitoring, and custom alerts, using AI to identify losses, visualise data trends, and offer actionable recommendations to facilitate deployment of site teams to repair and maintain assets.