OREANDA-NEWS. As a result of constant thrust on developing new technologies and products, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has recorded a 10% growth in its Intellectual Capital in FY 2012-13. During the year, a record 385 patents and copyrights were filed by the company, translating into filing of over one patent / copyright every working day.

With this, the company’s intellectual capital has gone up to 2,170 patents and copyrights filed, which are in productive use in the company’s business. During this period, BHEL invested an all-time high Rs.12,520 Million on R&D initiatives, over 4% higher than the previous year. With an R&D spend at nearly 2.5% of its turnover; BHEL is the highest spender on R&D in India for its kind of industry.

Commercialisation of products and systems developed by way of in-house Research and Development contributed around 20% to the company’s total turnover of Rs.501,560 Million in 2012-13.

R&D efforts of the company are aimed at improving the performance and efficiency of existing products, and also developing new products using state-of-the-art technologies and processes. Focus is on the relevance to the needs of the country to remain contemporary both in terms of technology & features vis-a-vis global benchmarks.

Significantly, 145 Technology Plans with over 1500 R&D projects have been identified for establishing self sufficiency in the areas of UHV transmission, Transportation, Ultra Super Critical Plants, Renewable energy, IGCC, Water, etc. BHEL has also initiated a major programme for Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) and design automation for all its major products across the company to offer optimized benchmark solutions. This is expected to substantially reduce the engineering cycle time and eliminate errors.

Notably, BHEL is one of the only four Indian companies and the only Indian Public Sector Enterprise figuring in ‘The Global Innovation 1000’ of Booz & Co., a list of 1,000 publicly-traded companies which are the biggest spenders on R&D in the world. BHEL has also won the coveted CII-Thompson Reuters Innovation Award in the ‘Hi-tech Corporate’ category. The award recognises BHEL’s innovation and entrepreneurship in India based on number of patents and efficiency and impact of innovation as measured by patent citations. In addition, BHEL’s innovativeness was recognised by Forbes that ranked it as the Ninth Most Innovative Company in the world.

R&D and technology development are of strategic importance to the company as it operates in a competitive environment where technology is a major factor. BHEL’s long term R&D programme focuses on emerging technology areas such as Clean Coal technologies; Nano technology; Hydrogen Energy technologies; Superconducting applications and Solar technologies and products & systems for Ultra-high Voltage transmission segment for addressing the country’s future demands.