Table of Contents
What has happened?
- The government has notified the timeline for replacing the existing meters with ‘smart prepaid’ meters having a facility to enable the ‘prepayment’ feature.
- As per the Ministry of Power notification, all consumers (other than agricultural consumers) in areas with communication networks, will be supplied electricity with smart meters.
- The replacement work will complete in two phases by December 2023 and March 2025.
- The Power Ministry had last week advised all central ministries and departments to switch to prepaid smart electricity
- The ministries have also been asked to issue all enabling orders in this regard.
What exactly are smart meters?
- Broadly speaking, smart meters can communicate data to the discom.
- However, a good smart meter does a lot more.
- The Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) technical specifications say that smart meters should have features such as-
- Bidirectional communication, integrated load limiting switch, remote firmware upgrade, net metering, and prepaid, post-paid, and time-
- of-day tariff features, over and above the measurement of electrical energy parameters.
- As such, with smart meters a discom can manage its operations better.
- Information on EESL’s ‘National Smart Meter Program Dashboard’ reveals tremendous benefits:-
- 11-36% reduction in AT&C [aggregate technical and commercial] losses and 21% improvement in billing efficiency or ₹301 per month per meter (though experts of energy think-tank Prayas
- Energy have questioned this figure.
- From 11 lakh smart meters, discoms have seen additional revenues of ₹264 crore, it says.
Power ministry notification
- All consumers (other than agricultural consumers) in areas with a communication network, shall be supplied electricity with smart meters working in prepayment mode, conforming to relevant IS, within the timelines specified below:
- All Union Territories, clectrical divisions having more than 50% consumers in urban areas with AT&C losses more than 15% in financial year 2019-20, other electrical divisions with AT&C losses more than 25% in financial year 2019-20, all Government offices at Block level and above, and all industrial and commercial consumers, shall be metered with smart meters with prepayment mode by December, 2023.
- All other areas shall be metered with smart meters with prepayment mode by March, 2025.
- All feeders and distribution transformers (DTS) shall be provided with meters having AMR facility or covered under AMI.
- This notification shall be effective from the date of publishing in the Gazette of India.
- India plans to install 250 million smart meters at a cost of ₹3 lakh crore.
- The good news is that the smart meter programme has got off to a good start.
- The note of caution expressed by experts is that the rollout needs to be carefully done, avoiding pitfalls.
- About 2 million smart meters have been installed under different initiatives in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi,
- But mainly through the public sector company EESL, which pays for the meters initially and later recovers the cost from the discoms over a period of time.
- EESL has so far installed 58 million smart meters.
The problem?
- The leap from 2 million to 250 million is not going to be easy.
- For the movement to reach its goal, discoms will have to get into the act.
- First, who will bear the cost of smart meters — the consumers or the discoms?
- Since discoms stand to gain financially — consumers gain mainly through potentially better service — they should foot the bill.
- But their poor financial health stands in the way.
- The UP discoms had, during the rollout in 2018, clearly mentioned that the costs would not be recovered from consumers.
- But they went back on their word, petitioning the State electricity regulator for defraying the costs through an annual increase in tariff.
- Rajasthan and Bihar also want consumers to pay, but there is bound to be resistance to this.
- Second, experts also point out that unless the movement is made consumer-centric, rather than discom-centric, it will not go on well.
- There are a number of aspects to consumer-centricity.
- For example, they should be given sufficient notice before the meter disconnects the power supply, especially in the case of pre-paid meters (which the government is keen on).
- Also, there is the issue of data — access and privacy. Consumers should have access to their own data collected by smart meters.
- Besides, the consumer should see some tangible benefits from smart meters.
- One possibility is the automatic compensation for power outages exceeding a certain period of time — something that is envisaged in the Ministry of Power’s Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020.
conclusion
- Govt said that prepaid smart metering in all government departments would not only bring DISCOMs back on the path of financial sustainability and promote energy efficiency,
- But would also serve as a model for similar state department mechanisms to promote pre-payment of electricity.
Q) Which of the given is the SI Unit of Electric Current?
- Ohm
- Ampere
- Volt
- Faraday
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