Could you brief us about Altair?
Altair, a NASDAQ listed global technology company, was started in 1985 and provides software and cloud solutions in the areas of simulation, data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High Performance Computing (HPC). Altair enables organisations across broad industry segments to compete more effectively in a connected world while creating a more sustainable future. Our simulation-driven approach to innovation is powered by our integrated suite of software which optimises design performance across multiple disciplines encompassing structures, motion, fluids, thermal management, electromagnetics, system modeling and embedded systems, while also providing data analytics and true-to-life visualisation and rendering. As a leading provider of enterprise-class engineering software enabling innovation, we deliver reduced development times and lower costs throughout the entire product lifecycle from concept design to in-service operation.

How is Altair serving the energy sector?
Altair has been at the forefront serving the entire value chain in the energy sector. Whether it is helping customers explore sustainable generation, achieve efficient distribution, maintain reliable power grids, or enable digital transformation by leveraging smart grid technology to improve customer experiences, and ensure safety and compliance. Whether in oil and gas, coal, renewable energy, nuclear power, or distribution, our customers use our technologies to simulate everything from geomechanics to composite wind turbine blades and analyse structural safety to network loads.

Altair provides real-time streaming analytics designed to handle energy industry requirements. Our digital twin and internet of things (IoT) technology further support the critical functions required to gather, analyse and monitor the vast amounts of data generated in energy production and utilities applications, and undertake optimisation wherever necessary.

Discoms face big T&D losses. How can your company help them reduce their losses?
The complexity of the energy sector is further exagerated by a growing emphasis to tackle the endemic challenge of T&D losses. This requires a special attention to optimise energy production and distribution, and increase network efficiency.

Data analytics applications from Altair enable operators to process, monitor, analyse, and visualise the massive amounts of data streaming in from sensors and other devices in real time, so network loads can be optimised based on real-time feedback from the grid. It combines real-time streams with historical data, to make on-the-fly comparisons with previous activity and develop a comprehensive view of operations leading to effective decision making.

Our simulation technology is increasingly used to design networks spanning energy generation to consumption. The advanced electromagnetic, electric, and thermal simulation capabilities allow power design engineering to optimise the energy efficiency of power generation and energy storage systems. It provides valuable insights for all transmission and distribution components, including power transformers, cables, electric switchboards, switchgears, contactors, relays, sensors, and switches, and ensuring their reliability under real world conditions.

From wind energy to oil and gas exploration and production, Altair’s high performance computing technology drives capturing, producing, and optimising energy, and provides the biggest, most complex, and highest-throughput workloads for energy producers and researchers globally.

How will growing electric vehicles (EVs) sales and increasing usage of renewable energy translate into new business opportunities for your company?
OEMs, suppliers, and emerging vehicle manufacturers are investing billions to develop innovative electric vehicles and optimise development and production processes to deliver e-mobility to the masses. For companies to realise their goals of achieving mass adoption and profitability, we see simulation technology as the cornerstone of any e-mobility strategy. Altair technologies are changing the way electric passenger, off-highway and autonomous vehicles are designed, enabling them to accelerate product development, develop a sustainable design process, enhance energy efficiency, optimise integrated system performance, and deploy manufacturing operations that scale to meet growing demand.

Maximising vehicle range through efficient product design, improving battery system performance, use of appropriate materials, and working to replace and upgrade the utility infrastructure with an increasing focus on renewable energy, presents new business opportunity for Altair, with our simulation and optimisation technologies fuelling this growing trend. Our core competencies include turbine vortex simulation and prediction, acoustic interpretation and assessment, wind farm siting, composite blade analysis and optimisation, and transmission dynamics simulation and optimisation.

How are massive capital investments in infrastructure, railways, metros, defense, etc leading to increase in demand for the products/solutions of your company?
Developing economies are looking to rapidly transform and grow through digital transformation and electrification, further encouraged by massive government capital layout to serve the demands of increasing power access, urbanisation, and rapid industrialisation. Designing the efficient and sustainable power and energy equipment required for that is supported by Altair analysis and optimisation. Altair solvers can be coupled to model the energy industry’s multi-physics problems, and our high-performance computing and cloud technologies ensure customers can keep up with their pace of innovation, scale to meet growing demands, and adapt to the changing environment.

Sustainability is viewed as a key performance parameter for all industries. How will your company propel the cause of sustainability?
Sustainability is a multi-dimensional concept that demands solutions spanning operational efficiency, material efficiency, light weighting, shared economy etc. With the resultant demand for safer, more efficient, and more innovative products and processes, we aim to help our customers accomplish their goals, transforming their design and decision-making by applying simulation, machine learning, and optimisation throughout their product lifecycles. It is our commitment to reduce the environmental impact of goods and services around the world and across an array of industries.

A simulation-driven approach to product innovation allows rapidly validating products, processes, and experiences in the virtual world thus eliminating the carbon and waste stream impacts of physical prototyping.

Further, the cloud-based applications allow multiple organisations to use efficiently scaled and shared infrastructure, eliminating countless independent compute server installations and giving them access to a range of applications that help them design sustainably. Supporting additive manufacturing and other advanced manufacturing techniques that reduce the environmental footprint, without compromising on stellar designs developed using our simulation methodologies, and all at the lowest possible cost, is another dimension Altair helps address.

What are your plans for Elecrama 2023?
Altair is participating in Elecrama to partner organisations in their product electrification initiatives, and help build sustainable power and energy solutions through practical design strategies and enabling technologies. Altair will showcase the novel, multi-disciplinary design strategies and solutions for the development of various parts of electric drive systems, smart grids, energy conversion and transmission equipment, and power electronics. The system integration and the architecture changes that ensue at system level to build innovative energy-efficient solutions.