Energy Efficiency Services Ltd. (EESL),
under the Ministry of Power, Government of India had put out a mega tender
for procurement of 50 lakh smart meters in July, which would help in
reducing AT&C losses, power theft and also help in monitoring of round the
clock power supply eventually leading to greater efficiency and 24X7 power for
all.
A Pre-Bid Meeting was
held by EESL on 22nd August 2017 for procurement of 50 lakh smart
meters which elicited a stellar response from the smart meter manufacturers,
system integrators and has also excited various other stakeholders including
World Bank and telecom operators etc. The interest
shown by the smart meter fraternity is also evident from the participation of
about 100 companies in the pre-bid meeting and is a
measure of the potential which smart projects have in India.
EESL will be making the entire upfront
investment as well as maintain the whole infrastructure for the next ten years. This approach has made the project feasible as most of the
state utilities are not in a position for such rollouts due to their financial
constraints. EESL will recover its investment from the
savings accruing to the DISCOMs in subsequent years.
The meters are being procured for
implementation of smart grid projects in the states of Haryana and Uttar
Pradesh. These meters will help these states in
not only significantly reducing their AT&C losses way of increased billing
efficiency, but will completely change the way in which electrical energy is
presently being consumed and paid for by the ordinary consumers.
Installation of these smart meters along
with its associated communication and IT infrastructure will enable the DISCOMs
to obtain real time energy consumption data of each consumer for subsequent
analysis and will pave the way for initiating various smart measures by DISCOMs
like Time Of Day (TOD)/Time Of Use (TOU) billing, prediction and management of
peak demand, providing real time energy consumption data to consumer, prepaid
billing facility, remote connection and disconnection of load, accurate
billing, etc. Installation of these meters will also
obviate the need for the meter reader’s visit to each and
every consumer.
In order to make the entire project
feasible and affordable, EESL has unbundled the Advanced Metering
Infrastructure (AMI) project into two
parts viz. procurement of smart meter and arranging the
system integrator. EESL is also planning to issue the
tender for selection of system integrator early next month, as second part of
the AMI project.
Senior officials of Haryana and Uttar
Pradesh DISCOMs were present in the pre-bid meeting along
with representatives from DISCOMs of Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, as well as
senior officials from CEA, NSGM etc.
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RM/VM