Climate Software Lab:
Keynote
Arun Madhavan, SVP — CSL
The Climate Software Lab was born out of the dual ambitions of GPS Renewables’ founders.
They wanted to ensure GPSR grows as a modern, digitally-enabled firm- and they also saw software as a technology that can contribute meaningfully towards climate solutions. This intent is evident in the fact that the software team at GPSR is not treated as an IT Department, but as a Climate Lab.
The rapid growth of the firm over the last few years meant we had to focus primarily on our internal requirements. From Digital Twinning of our plants to workforce management, we worked across a wide range of solutions. It kept us busy, but it also gave us something valuable: a deep understanding of what a climate technology company actually needs from its software.
One important pillar of our development has been the reliance we placed on Free and Open Source Software. This brought us multiple advantages.
The most obvious is cost — any equivalent system built on dominant proprietary technologies would have increased our costs by several orders of magnitude. But even more important is the flexibility and integration it enables. Our tools are deeply customised to our needs, built around the unique process flows we follow. From ERP to project management to document management, everything talks to everything else.
We are not just beneficiaries of the open source ecosystem — we are trying to give back.
We have already contributed fixes and bug reports to upstream projects, and as our internal systems mature, we aim to do considerably more.
Which brings us to our second original objective. CSL will restart its earlier initiatives in climate-focused software – such as the landslide prediction system we worked on previously. We look forward to building inter-disciplinary collaborations around climate-related software development. At the same time, internal needs will not take a back seat. Many of our applications have become operationally critical, so scalability, availability, and security will be areas of sharper focus going forward.
Lastly, I want to thank all of you for working with us patiently over these years. We were a small team, and the demand on us grew relentlessly alongside GPS’s own growth. Without your support and involvement, CSL would not have been able to do what it did. Together, we shall make GPS India’s most digitally native climate company.