Cleanest Indian City Issues Tender for 30,000 Smart Meters to Clean its Power Grid

Indore Smart City has issued a tender for installation of 30,000 smart energy meters in the city, with a bid-submission deadline set for October 31^st, 2018.

Indore Smart City Development Limited, the SPV formed to implement similar projects in the city under the centre’s Smart Cities Mission will curate the project. With an estimated cost of Rs 157.9 million, the deadline for the completion of the project has been set two years in the areas identified for the area-based development (ABD).

The scope of work includes the supply, installation, testing, and commissioning of about 30,000 smart meters with RF mesh communication. The successful bidder will be responsible for integrating the smart meters with existing communication infrastructure, existing head end system (HES), meter data management (MDM) system, cloud hosting for applications, billing system and revenue/service advisory services of Madhya Pradesh Pashchim Kshetra Vidyut Vitaran Co. Ltd.

The successful bidder will also be responsible for onsite warranty support and field maintenance of smart meters with network interface card (NIC) for five years from the date of Installation and five and a half years from date of supply, whichever is earlier.

Smart metering in the selected areas will work to enhance the overall efficiency of the system, providing a wireless two-way communication between the distribution company and the consumer meter. The consumption and the tariff at any point of time can be accessed by the consumer. Installing smart energy meters in the 100 smart cities selected by the Government of India is a crucial part of the plan to improve power efficiency and customisation of power usage.

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a joint venture of PSUs under the Ministry of Power, is responsible for implementing Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). A smart meter reduces meter-reading, data-entry errors and costs by removing the need for manual meter reading. Therefore, enabling utilities to reduce their Aggregate Transmission and Commercial (AT&C) losses and billing inefficiencies.

Indore won the ‘Special Mention’ award at the recently concluded Smart City Expo India held in Jaipur, and keeping up with the trend also bagged the award for cleanest Indian city for a second time at the Swacch Survekshan 2018, under the Swacch Bharat Mission. Showing no signs of  resting on its laurels, the city has acted promptly on the smart metering initiative being pushed by the centre to help clean up the grid. BSES, Delhi’s power discom also came forward with a similar program but expects the project to be completed over multiple years leading into the next decade.

Recently, EESL signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state discoms of Haryana to install 1 million smart meters across the state. North Delhi’s power discom, Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL), at the same time announced its plans to install smart meters for all its 16 lakh consumers in the capital.