EESL to install smart meters across 75,000 Delhi households

01 May 2018 CW Staff

Energy Efficiency Services (EESL) has signed a MoU with the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) to replace 75,000 conventional electricity meters with smart meters, which will enhance consumer convenience and rationalise electricity consumption in the capital. The MoU was signed by Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director, EESL, and Naresh Kumar, Chairman, NDMC, in the presence of Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Secretary, Ministry of Power. As per the MoU, EESL will fund, build, operate and manage the smart metering (AMI) solution implementation in the project area. It will select a system integrator to implement the smart metering (AMI) solution within six months, integrating it with NDMC IT legacy applications. NDMC will benefit from enhanced consumer satisfaction resulting from better complaint management, faster restoration of outages, awareness of optimised consumption pattern, and improvement in system stability, reliability and transparency. "We are pleased to partner with NDMC in its pursuit of energy sustainability and adoption of future-ready technology solutions such as smart meters," said Saurabh Kumar. "Thrust on such efficient systems is critical for consumption and growth in a sustainable manner. Smart meters will enable consumers to monitor their consumption pattern and corresponding cost, leading them to adapt their energy use and reduce power wastage, providing long-term carbon and financial savings. The meters will also provide accurate and real-time information about energy use, enabling them to make informed decisions about their energy behaviour." EESL is procuring smart meters as well as services of the system integrator with 100 per cent investment, enabling utilities to benefit from smart meters with zero upfront financial investment. Their repayment to EESL will be through the monetisation of energy savings, resulting from enhanced billing accuracy, avoided meter reading costs and other efficiencies. This includes the immediate elimination of the cost of meter readings. These savings will further enable NDMC to invest in value-added services for its consumers.        Indeed, NDMC's large-scale adoption of smart meters is a significant measure towards future-ready technologies.