NEW DELHI: The government has urged electricity meter manufacturers to scale up production in India, as it plans to shift all connections to smart prepaid meters over the next three years.
“In next three years metering will go smart prepaid, and gone will be the days of bills reaching your house. So need of the hour is to scale up manufacturing of smart prepaid meters and to bring down their prices,” Minister of Power and New & Renewable energy R.K Singh said in a meeting with meter manufacturers here on Thursday.
The Power Minister has made a strong pitch for smart and pre-paid metering as a means of making state utilities more efficient and bringing down their losses in the past.
The meter manufacturers were also assured of a steady demand for smart prepaid meters which the government is also planning to make mandatory after a particular date.
The meeting discussed aspects of smart meters like BIS certification, compatibility with GPRS, harmonisation with existing digital infrastructure among other things.
“This will revolutionise the power sector by way of reduced AT&C losses, better health of DISCOMs, incentivisation of energy conservation and ease of bill payments etc,” the statement from the power ministry added.
The government is procuring smart and prepaid meters to be deployed across the country. State-owned Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has floated two global tenders for procuring a total of 10 million smart meters.
Another tender for procuring 10 million standalone prepaid meters is underway. The prepaid meters will be deployed in Uttar Pradesh as part of the Saubhagya scheme which aims to electrify over four crore households till December this year.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes
