Team Herald
PANJIM: The State’s Electricity Department will soon install smart meters to over 7.41 lakh consumers replacing the existing electronic meters.
According to information provided by the department officials, as many as 7,41,158 consumer meters will be replaced with smart meters in pre-paid mode. The total cost of the project is Rs 46,742 crore and will be executed in TOTEX/OPEX mode.
The project includes installation of smart meters with communicating facilities developing of meter data management (MDM) system along with Meter Data Acquisition System (MDAS) wherein all the data in the consumer meters can be acquired.
The data can also be analysed for the purpose of load forecasting, demand side management, calculation of losses, etc.
In the first phase, 5,18,882 consumer meters will be replaced with smart meters while the entire project will be completed by March 2023. Also 8,500 digital meters of distribution transformer meters and nearly 850 feeder/boundary meters will be replaced with smart meters.
According to these officials, the installation of smart meters in pre-paid mode will help consumers to plan their power utilisation in a better way besides, optimising the operational performance of the electricity department and identification of revenue leakages.
The department will use the latest 5G technology while, Radio Frequency (RF) technology will be used in areas having network problems.
The tendering process will start within a month and as per the scheme guidelines framed by the Government of India, the department will appoint a project management agency for assessing them in floating of tenders and monitoring of the projects both — smart meters and other power infrastructure projects.
