Fuel consumption is a major concern area for large organisations, as it forms a major part of their operational costs. As the smart workplace culture dawns upon India, operational efficiency is at the core, to save energy and resources.
Avnish Singh, founder, Briston Technomach, has developed an Internet of Things (IoT)-based solution, FuelArk, to monitor an organisation’s fuel usage. Apart from tracking, the solution offers many other advantages, such as data analysis, pilferage control and automatic audit. Data can be accessed from anywhere, at any time.
Fuel costs can be a pressing issue for any company. It is therefore extremely important to track vehicles’ fuel consumption pattern. FuelArk sends alerts if a tracked vehicle needs maintenance to perform better. It also brings about transparency to the entire process.
Fuelark comprises the following:
Level sensor. This is installed inside the fuel tank of the machinery/ vehicle. Data from the sensor is fed into the intelligent computing unit.
Remote monitoring software. A specially-developed algorithm-based software provides features such as timely reports of the consumed and refilled fuel, running and standby hours, and real-time tracking.
Cloud integration. The entire system is integrated with a cloud-based backend network. This provides you with controlled access to your fuel/energy consumption data/reports from anywhere and at any time. It also minimises any significant investments in backend hardware, and provides you with a high level of data security.
FuelArk+ is an extension of FuelArk. It adds load monitoring to FuelArk, and provides you with the exact cost of electricity produced by the generators. It does this by correlating fuel consumption and energy production data. It also provides you with data to optimise load sharing across generators and, thus, minimises overall fuel consumption.
FuelArk uses IoT-based technology to integrate fuel level and load sensors to provide you with insightful data about fuel consumption and electricity production efficiency.
The company wishes to dominate the market and increase their reach to every infrastructure, including logistics and transportation, and industrial units in India, where there is a need for Big Data and the IoT. There is great potential in the IoT space in India, as per Mckinsey and KPMG reports.
Challenges
The biggest challenge the company is facing is the lack of awareness about fuel management using the IoT. Indian companies are still trying to adopt new methodologies to control efficiency and loss prevention.
FuelArk’s USP is in the software that they built on cloud. It fetches data from the computing device and then reports it back to the system. This gives actual data reporting of each machine, idle or moving.
However, the company faced several challenges to integrate their product with different machines (be it construction equipment, power back utilities, trucking and big storage tanks).
Getting the right customers and the right price for the technology are some other limitations. The company is looking for strategic investors and board advisors. So far, FuelArk has created a niche in the infrastructure and construction space. Some leading brands in India are already using their offerings.
Real-life application
- Following benefits were achieved by a manufacturing company by implementing FuelArk:
Replacement of manual fuel consumption log books by automated reconciliation processes - Different gensets showed different consumption levels of fuel while functioning at exactly the same load. This resulted in identification of gensets that showed sub-optimal performance and needed maintenance servicing. It finally resulted in lesser consumption of fuel after proper servicing of those gensets.
—Nidhi Arora, executive editor, EFY
