L&T bids lowest for Smart Meters

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has emerged as the lowest bidder of the tender issued by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) to procure 50 lakh smart meters.

The company has been selected through an international competitive bidding. “The meters will be installed over a period of 3 years in a phased manner in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. L&T quoted the lowest price of Rs. 2,722 per single phase smart meter,” an official statement said.

The tender floated by EESL, a company under the administrative control of Ministry of Power, is the world’s largest single smart meter procurement. Fourteen leading manufacturers from around the world participated in the tender. 40 lakh smart meters will be deployed in UP and the remaining 10 lakh in Haryana. “The price quoted by L&T is 40-50 per cent lower than the current market rates,” the statement added.

Smart meters are a part of the overall Advanced Metering Infrastructure Solutions (AMI) aimed at better demand response designed to reduce energy consumption during peak hours. The overall AMI solution will also have a system integrator who will be responsible for meter installation, data storage on cloud, preparing dashboards, etc.

The Smart meters procured by EESL use GPRS technology to allow 2-way communication between the DISCOM and consumers. Once installed, an energy supplier can read a meter via the mobile phone network. Householders can also receive a digital display which helps them to access how much power they are consuming – and its cost – in real time. Smart meters enable one to see the consumption pattern and the cost. This means one can adapt the energy use and cut down on waste to provide financial savings to consumers. They further provide an accurate and real-time information about the energy use, enabling one to take informed decisions about their energy behavior.

EESL is procuring the smart meters and services of the system integrator with 100 per cent investment and the utilities will make zero-investment. The repayment to EESL will be through savings resulting from enhanced billing efficiency, avoided meter reading costs, etc. It is said that the average cost of meter reading is Rs. 40 per meter, which will be completely avoided.