Government to invest Rs 22,500 crore for smart prepaid meters

A sum of Rs 22,500 crore has been earmarked as the cabinet approved the central government grant for installing 25 crore smart prepaid meters across the country under the Rs 3 lakh crore scheme for power distribution entities, which are discoms recently. The total outlay for smart-metering is Rs 1.5 lakh crore under the scheme, of which Rs 900 per meter will be provided by the centre to the discoms, which comes to approximately 15% of the price of these devices. States that manage to install smart prepaid meters before December 2023 will also be qualified for an additional incentive of Rs 450 per meter. As indicated by an office memorandum released by the Ministry of Power on the outlines of the discom scheme, the latest meters must be installed first in the 500 cities included under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut) programme where Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses are higher than 15%, which are an indicator of pilferage. The priorities will also be provided to install smart prepaid meters in industrial and commercial consumers, UTs, government offices and areas with high loss levels. The finances will be received by the state only after the successful completion of the demonstration of one prepaid billing period. The Minister of Power briefed the parliament that currently, around 25.2 lakh smart meters were installed across the nation, and about 81 lakh smart meters are at different stages of execution. The prepaid electricity meters are considered as significant tools to support the efforts of Discoms to cut pilferage and decrease the gap between the price of the power supply and revenue figured out by making sure of the timely payments from the consumers. Image Source Also read: EDF instals 1 lakh smart meters in first large deployment in India