00:00I'd love to start talking about the Google experiment, as we call it, where Google has committed $15 billion to
00:07build an AI hub in India to serve India's needs, but also to serve Google's needs across the world or
00:13across the region.
00:14And to do that, it is not only going to set up captive power, but it has also just been
00:20granted a deemed distribution license.
00:23Explain to me the kind of pressure AI is going to put on the power estimates that you all have
00:28shared so far.
00:30And what do you make of this Google experiment and how it's going to work?
00:33So right now in the country, we have about 1.5 gigawatt of supply which goes to data centers.
00:42With whatever has been announced, we are expecting that this will become about 10 gigawatt by 2030 and about 30
00:50gigawatt by 2035.
00:52So that's the type of number that…
00:54Now, from 1.5 to 10 is not a great number.
01:00Mohit will agree that we'll be able to cater to that.
01:04Even 30 gigawatt by 2035 is not a great number.
01:09We'll be able to handle this.
01:11As far as you mentioned about the DEEM license, the DEEM license…
01:15Yes, the Google experiment.
01:16Yeah, the Google experiment is because they give a DEEM license.
01:20Then as a distribution company, you don't have to pay the cross-subsidy charges.
01:26Now, when you do renewable projects and you are buying power, you need to pay cross-subsidy charges to the
01:33grid.
01:34Here, you will not have to pay cross-subsidy because you are a DEEM licensee and you can buy that
01:39power.
01:40And some of the cross-subsidy surcharge or the other surcharges that one has to pay, you don't have to.
01:47So that's…
01:49It protects.
01:50Also, it gives you the freedom that within your campus or within your area, you can have your own network.
01:56You can bring the last mile connectivity from the grid to yourself.
02:01And to that extent, it gives you the flexibility of arranging power and making it more competitive compared to the
02:10otherwise industrial power that you would have consumed.
02:14Assuming there will be humongous demand for data centers, you know, given AI adoption, you know, across the country,
02:21do you expect that most of them will rely on captive power and on this sort of DEEM distribution license,
02:30thereby remaining entirely or almost off-grid and building their own parallel power structures, you know, to the national grid?
02:40So our point of view is slightly different from what Prabirji has on AI data centers.
02:45We feel they are likely to be big, bigger than 30 gigawatts, may not be in 2035.
02:50AI demand, you're saying, it's going to be bigger than 30 gigawatts.
02:52Yeah, yeah, because India is actually very uniquely positioned in terms of supplying power.
02:56And India is also uniquely positioned in the sense that we can do RE-based supply at much larger scale
03:04to these data centers.
03:06Because what we understand from the limited interactions we've had with most of these people, their requirement is like today.
03:14Yeah.
03:15They are keen to have the supply starting in the next 18 months.
03:18They don't want to wait for the next five years to set up a coal-based or whatever kind of
03:22power supply.
03:23They want it.
03:24So RE is very...
03:25Renewable energy.
03:26Renewable is actually the one which can do that in the shortest time frame.
03:30And incidentally, as per our research, that's also the lowest cost, whether you look at it on a 24-7
03:35flat block basis or as an intermittent supply.
03:38So we feel that data centers could be a big business opportunity in India.
03:42Of course, I mean, assuming that they will all comply with the Government of India regulations for storage of data
03:48and so on and so forth.
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