Blog post
Smart meters are a necessity and no longer a luxury for India’s power distribution sector
![Smart meters are a necessity and no longer a luxury for India’s power distribution sector]()
![Smart meters are a necessity and no longer a luxury for India’s power distribution sector]()
REQUIREMENT
How have smart meters transformed from a luxury to an essential component in reshaping India's power distribution sector?
PRODUCTS USED
Three Phase Meter
Single Phase Meter
TOTAL SAVED till date
₹ L
India’s power distribution sector has been going through a whirlwind of positive reforms in the past few years.
And rightly so –
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India gets 31% of its power from renewables (not including hydro).The US is at 25%.
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At current prices of solar and wind in India, coal based power is 50% more expensive.
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India’s energy demand grew by 10% in 2022 and the country’s expected to account for 25% of global energy demand growth over next 20 years.
One of the major policy shifts that the country has done to enable this growth is mandate the adoption of smart meters pan India in the shortest possible time. Over the last 12 months, more than 60% of India’s energy meters have been tendered out for conversion to smart meters. Despite this extremely strong adoption rate, in some states the question still remains – with more than 90% of consumers spending less than INR 700/month today, do we really need smart meters?
To answer this, its important for regulators to visualize the world that smart meters will enable.
Smart meters will be for the power sector, that UPI has been for banking and payments in India. It is the fundamental building block that will be necessary to manage the massive rise in energy demand that India will experience over the next 20 years.
Let’s dive a bit deeper into this world that smart meters will enable:
Transition to electric mobility
EVs are going to put tremendous stress on India’s distribution infrastructure.
- 1 Two Wheeler charger Load = Load of 1 ton AC
- 1 Four Wheeler charger Load = Load of 7 x 1 ton Acs
If every household in India converts their vehicles to electric, the grid will need to support at least 2- 3X of the current domestic power demand.
With smart meters, utilities get the following:
- Accurate forecasting and planning – Using smart metering data, Utilities can forecast the demand growth in the network and accurately plan the laying of new lines and upgrading transformer capacities. Without this, when EVs flood the network, transformer explosions will become regular affairs
- Demand response – Smart meters can enable differential pricing for EV charging to encourage people to switch to EVs. They can also allow consumers to charge their EVs when cheap solar or wind power is available
- EV to Grid – Smart meters will enable utilities to incentivize consumers to sell stored power from batteries back to the grid to meet any surge in demand, which otherwise today require expensive gas or coal power plants to be fired up
Making reliability a priority
Just like in several developed economies, India has started to mandate utilities to pay consumers for avoidable power cuts.
Smart meters will enable the following:
- Detecting faulty lines – With smart meters, Utilities will be able to detect the location of the fault digitally and automatically, which will assist with faster rectification
- Identifying potential transformer failures – Phase imbalance, transformer overloading, increase in transformer losses, can all be detected remotely to enable utilities to rectify faults even before they occur
- Automate rebates – From a regulator’s perspective, smart prepaid metering will enable instant transfer of power cut penalties to customer accounts, which will improve customer satisfaction and increase utility accountability
Stopping leakages
While automating billing and collection is a key benefit of smart meters, there are several other revenue leakages that happen on the grid, which smart meters can plug:
- Contracted demand charges – A large number of consumers in India apply for subsidized connections that have threshold consumption limits. However, consumers cross these limits and go undetected by the utility. Smart meters will detect these thresholds and can automatically move consumers to the tariff category that they are supposed to be on
- Power factor losses – Utilities today bear the costs of low power factor being caused by all non-industrial consumers. With smart meters, Utilities will get the choice to bill consumers by both kVAh and kWh depending on their power factor levels
- Theft detection – With system and consumer metering being replaced with smart meters in all places, utilities will be able to identify exact transformers where energy losses are higher than expected to take timely vigilance actions
New business models
More important than the launch of the smart phone was the launch of the App and Play stores by Apple and Android. They unleashed the world of apps, which made the phone a true smart phone. Similarly, smart meters are only laying the foundation for new business models to be developed on top of this digital infrastructure. Some examples of the same are as below:
- Power portfolio management – With separation of carriage and content and smart meters in every home, companies will be able to provide power portfolio management services to the end customer. Utilities will be able to capitalize their infra and transfer complete customer services to such companies
- Demand aggregators – With smart meters, virtual power plants and demand aggregation based business models will become a reality. Instead of investing in expensive non- renewable coal and gas power plants, simply controlling meters at scale, will enable utilities to balance demand and supply. For instance, agricultural pumps at scale can be managed remotely to operate only when cheap solar or wind power are being injected into the grid
In conclusion, smart meters are a necessity for energy transition just like computers, smart phones, the internet became a necessity for digital transformation. The grid of tomorrow needs to be much more robust, green, efficient and capable to handle larger quantum of power than the grid of today. And for this, smart meters are inevitable.
