Smart meters to leverage smart grid across the value chain

From the perspective of power utilities, smart meters are an opportunity to increase their energy mix from renewable sources.

India has already spanned the fulfilment mark of power generation capacity and is currently prepping up to augment its distribution network through various systems. With the large number of developments taking place in the electrical sector, it has become imperative to establish a manufacturing base of smart electricity meters to ensure adequate supply. In its latest report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy stated, “With the contemporaneous developments taking place, we need to ensure that there are multiple players in the segment.” The government’s recent move of asking all the states and UTs to replace conventional energy meters with prepaid smart meters in three years is aimed at giving the right choice of suppliers and cost to consumers and ensure healthy competition in the segment. The implementation of the smart meters programme will also address the issue of financial health of DISCOMs

Replacing conventional meters with smart meters
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her recent Union Budget speech highlighted that India’s average aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses are at 21.4 percent, pushing up the dues of DISCOMs to power generating companies to ₹72,938 crore at the end of November. Smart meters will minimise human intervention in metering, billing and collection, and help reduce theft by identifying loss pockets.

Lauding the government’s proposal to install 250 million prepaid smart meters across the country, Gautam Seth, Managing Director, HPL Electric & Power Ltd., says, “This move can radically improve the financial health of the power utilities grappling with inefficiencies and operational challenges. Prepaid smart meters would be instrumental in improving the billing and revenue collection and reduce meter-reading and data-entry errors and costs. Through smart meters, power utilities will also be able to accurately forecast the demand and accordingly plan power purchase.” At the same time, prepaid smart meters would also help improve detection of power theft and help DISCOMs reduce power outages.

Market development of smart meters for greater energy usage control
Consumers would be the ultimate beneficiary of smart meters. Seth, on this note, explains that data from smart meters would be able to inform the consumer about the power usage pattern, thereby helping them make smart and informed decisions regarding how to improve their cost savings and overall energy usage. He adds, “Along with the implementation of smart meters, the power utilities can also bring out schemes wherein they can charge consumers different rates for peak and non-peak demand. From the perspective of power utilities, it is an opportunity to increase their power mix from renewable sources.”

Dhiman Chakraborty, DGM, Delta Electronics shares, “In India, we haven’t yet evaluated multiple communication technologies pertaining to smart meters and AMI. Till date, only GPRS and RF are installed and being extensively utilised by the industrial leaders.” The industry is still evaluating technologies like NB-IoT, LoRA, LTE-M which may take some more time for production deployment. NB-IoT is likely to be used by industries as a major communication technology in the long run because of its reliability and higher data rate though it’s much expensive than GPRS or RF.

Cost-effective management of power generation and distribution through smart meters
State-owned Energy Efficiency Services Limited has announced the completion of the installation of 10 lakh smart meters across India under the centre’s Smart Meter National Programme (SMNP). The organisation has set a target to install 25 crore smart meters over the next few years. Smart meters can bring in energy efficiency, empowering consumers to manage power consumption better. “It will help the DISCOMs to plan and manage power purchase and capital expenditure better, leading to improvement in the finances of the utilities, which can have a cascading effect on the power sector. Over time, smart meters would lead the way for the implementation of smart power grid across the country, revolutionising the entire power sector value chain.”

Chakraborty has some suggestions through which we can expedite the smart metering process. He feels that we need to have better coordination among different service providers like system integrators, MDMS providers and OEMs like meter manufacturers, communication modules and Head End System (HES) providers, Telco. In India, Delta has taken an initiative in smart metering to help DISCOMs with communication solutions like GPRS, RF-Mesh, 4G, LTE, NB-IoT Module and its own Head End System or Private Cloud.

The government’s evolving framework and policies are doubling the installations in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Countries like China and the US have witnessed the highest deployment of smart meters, mainly due to support from their respective governments. To conclude, these factors are expected to drive the demand for analytic solutions to handle the vast amount of data generated from smart meters.

Gautam Seth, Managing Director, HPL Electric & Power Ltd.
Prepaid smart meters would be instrumental in improving the billing and revenue collection and reduce meter-reading and data-entry errors and costs.

Dhiman Chakraborty, DGM, Delta Electronics
In India, we haven’t yet evaluated multiple communication technologies pertaining to smart meters and AMI. Till date, only GPRS and RF are installed and being extensively utilised by the industrial leaders.