Team Herald
PANJIM: Power Minister Pandurang Madkaikar on Tuesday said that installation of smart electricity meters in Panjim, under the Smart City initiative, will begin by January 2018. The minister confirmed that the tender for procuring the smart meters will be floated within the next eight days.
Speaking to Herald, Madkaikar said, “The tender process will be of one-and-half month duration. The tender will include procuring of SAP software required for the functioning of the meters. Once the procurement is done, the installation will start by January 2018.”
He added, “Approximately 70,000 smart electricity meters will be installed in Panjim and entire Division I at an estimated cost of Rs 50 crore. These meters will be read by a computer automatically every hour and will tell if the meter has gone wrong. The bill will be automatically generated by the computer and consumer notified through SMS and email,” he added.
He said that smart electricity meters will be accurate in their readings and errors will be zero. “The smart meters will reduce inaccuracies in billing and customers will get proper monthly bills. Meter readers in Division I will be put to different work and none will lose their jobs,” he said.
He added that once the meters are fitted customers can shut them by remote to avoid any problems and the same model can be replicated elsewhere if it is a success.
