Smart meters smartest way of electricity metering

India is currently witnessing a revolution in electricity metering, where electricity meters are replacing smart meters
With rapidly changing technical necessities of consumers, electricity meter market is assertively innovating technologies, mainly the power distribution companies. Energy, an important commodity, has been measured and examined over the years, and many new technologies have evolved to gain more benefit from metering systems.
According to IMS Research, there are 178 million smart meters for energy installed, until 2016 this number is expected to rise to 343 million.
The ‘smart’ metersSmart meters are considered as the next generation of electricity meters. Smart meters can help utilities constantly monitor and measure the consumption pattern by individual customers, who would be aware of any tampering events recorded and control the consumption during grid stress and peak shortage.
“Smart meters are equipped with communication capabilities such as Zigbee or Z wave which can communicate with various controller/devices and manage load of user effectively,” explains Sunil Singhvi, Vice President – Energy, Secure Meters Ltd.
According to J K Agarwal, Marketing Director, Genus Power Infrastructures Ltd., “The smart meters are really smart as they measure the electricity, control the load according to electrical parameters and communicate with central server station for real-time meter data monitoring and analysis.”
Relevance in IndiaIndia loses crores because of power theft which leads to unbilled consumption and unlawful usage of electricity. Smart meters have a very good potential in the country because it offers more control in energy usage and accurate bills.
Even aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) loss is a serious threat to financial viability of power distribution utilities. AT&C losses, the difference between units input into the system and the units for which the payment is collected, were as high as 38.86 per cent in 2001-02 and 34.54 per cent in 2005-06. Although there is no publicly available information of AT&C losses in India, it is said to be around 25 per cent.
According to Deepak V Konnur, Vice President and Sainath Bandhakavi, Sr Manager – Energy & Utilities, IBM India, “Real-time analytics tools can help utilities monitor the performance parameters like AT&C losses in a particular feeder and take immediate action to mitigate losses to occur for a longer time.”

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