• Company manages to raise 3.5 lakh bills with Actual Readings instead of Provisional ones during the lockdown ( April and May 2020)
• Prevents over 1.5 lakh visits / month to consumer premises during lockdown months
• Drive is in sync with Ministry of Power’s vision to install 25 crore Smart Meters
Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited, a leading power utility, supplying electricity to a populace of 7 million in North Delhi with a registered customer base of 1.7 million, has revolutionised the power distribution scenario with the use of Smart Meters.
The company has installed 2 Lakh smart meters across its consumer segments - domestic, industrial and commercial under its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project with Radio Frequency Canopy network – as per approval granted by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission. For this initiative, Tata Power-DDL is working in partnership with Landis+Gyr, a global leader in smart metering and smart grid solutions and with Siemens, the global leader in the area of Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution.
Smart Meter – Adding value to the Consumer:
With the introduction of Smart Meters, the above segments of consumers are now monitoring their Maximum Demand Indicator (MDI) and Power Factor (PF) through ‘TPDDL Connect Mobile App.’ on almost real time basis (at a gap of 4 hours) and maintaining them in an efficient way while saving on fixed and energy charges. Close monitoring of MDI is also helping them save about 30% on load violation charges beyond their sanctioned load.
In the coming days, Tata Power-DDL is also planning to provide customized alerts to consumers via SMS on MDI and PF variations so that consumers can maintain them on almost real time basis against the current delay of up to 30 days (billing period) to reduce the energy charges.
Smart Meter – Brings Benefits Galore!
These Smart Meters have also proved to be extremely beneficial for the company in raising over 3.5 Lakh bills based on Actual Readings instead of Provisional ones during the lockdown period in the months of April and May, and prevented over 1.5 Lakh visits / month to consumer premises.
Benefit for Consumers:
• Provides detailed information about their usage and consumption patterns
• Seamless and error free online billing process
• No manual reading, a safe practice during the ongoing pandemic
• Enables two-way communication between the meter and the central system over the free band RF Network, providing more accurate reading of consumer’s electricity consumption
• Helps in faster outage detection and restoration of service accurately by sending information of the outage to the utility thereby decreasing restoration time in case of outages
Benefit for the Company:
• Ensures billing accuracy by getting rid of errors
• Helps in predicting the demand
• Enhancement of operational efficiency
• Prevention of fraud and loss
Commenting on the same Mr. Ganesh Srinivasan, CEO, Tata Power-DDL said, "Tata Power-DDL has always been proactively focused to become a fully digital and networked utility. With the shift to Smart Meters, we aim to bring about a revolution, engage and empower our consumers by providing them full control of their electricity consumption. Additionally, installation of Smart Meters is proving to be of great help during the ongoing pandemic as it provides a win-win platform for both the utility and the consumers through very tangible benefits such as remote meter reading, improving billing and collection efficiency, curbing power theft, reducing AT&C losses, incentivizing energy conservation and facilitating easy bill payments.”
Tata Power-DDL’s Smart Meter drive is in sync with the Ministry of Power’s vision of replacing existing 25 crore meters with smart meters across states and union territories. Tata Power-DDL is also working with more than 20 State Distribution companies towards the vision of making them smart, resilient and financially viable through technology driven initiatives.