L&T bids lowest for EESL's tender for 5 million smart met

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has emerged as the lowest bidder in the tender issued by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) to procure 5 million 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 Rs2,722 per single phase smart meter while Genus Power and KEONICS emerged as second and third lowest bidders.

At this price the tender is valued at Rs1,360 crore.

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.

Of the 5 million smart metres, 4 million will be deployed in UP and the remaining 1 million in Haryana. The price quoted by L&T is 40-50 per cent lower than the current market rates.

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 bids for the system integrator will open on 31 October 2017.

The meters are being procured for implementation of smart grid projects in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh since these states grapple with huge AT&C losses, with the latest figures for both states being 28.42 per cent and 34.36 per cent respectively.

The smart meters will help these states in not only significantly reducing their AT&C losses by way of increased billing efficiency, but will completely change the way in which electrical energy is presently being consumed and paid for by the consumers. Installation of these smart meters along with its associated communication and IT infrastructure will enable the DISCOMs to obtain real time energy consumption data of each consumer for subsequent analysis.

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 behaviour.

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 Rs40 per meter, which will be completely avoided.