Adani, L&T among 18 firms to show interest in BSES smart meter tender

With 5 million meters, this is the largest tender in the country

The five million smart meter tender issued by Reliance Infrastructure’s BSES Limited has received interest from close to 18 companies, company executives have said.

Among the firms that have come forward during the Expression of interest (EoI) round are leading Indian companies such as HPL, Secure Meters, Adani Transmission, L&T. Finland-based Wirepas, EDF France, Enel Italy, Bosch Germany and Itron and Exceleron from the US are among international companies to have evinced interest.

BSES, which is one of power distribution companies (discoms) in the national capital, had last week announced that it will install five million smart meters in its designated areas. The company issued a tender worth Rs 4,000 crore to procure smart meters.

BSES owns and operates two discoms--BSES Rajdhani Limited and BSES Yamuna Limited--across south, west and east Delhi. The smart meters roll out will start with high consumption areas and consumers, said executives.

The company aims to commence the roll out by this October and conclude it by March 2025. Currently five states have a large-scale smart meter installation programme ongoing. Uttar Pradesh has installed 1.16 million meters, followed by Bihar (870,000) Rajasthan (550,000, Haryana (452,000) and Assam (283,000).

A smart meter has a modem (communication device) and a remote switch by which demand, supply and billing can be monitored and controlled remotely. Data from the meter is collected in a cloud server. This reduces energy theft, improves billing and bill collection. It also helps discoms collect data of consumer demand patterns, which in turn, can be used to plan supply.

The BSES smart meters would offer the choice to consumers to switch to prepaid mode from postpaid. Company executives said this would also assist in renewable energy integration along with load forecasting and scheduling, demand side management and load management.