Bihar—a state traditionally known for its impoverished power value chain—is today India’s leading state with respect to prepaid meter deployment.
As of given date, India had a total of around 4.21 lakh prepaid energy meters of which Bihar alone accounted for some 3.51 lakh. Uttar Pradesh came next in order with 0.65 lakh prepaid meters. Such meters currently exist in just two other states – Assam and Haryana. In both the cases, the deployment is in its early days.
Prepaid smart meters represent India’s most potential technological tool to combat financial losses of state power discoms. Over the next three years, India has pledged to roll out 25 crore prepaid meters, implying that the entire nation would be “prepaid” consumers of electricity supply. (Read more)
As of December 9, 2021, India had a total installed smart meter base of 37.07 lakh, out of which 4.21 lakh were of the “prepayment” type while the remaining 32.86 lakh were without the prepayment option.
As expected, the rollout of prepaid meters had to begin with states with highest AT&C losses, which explains why Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were chosen as the early destinations. Most of the prepaid meters so far have been installed under the Centrally-sponsored Smart Meter National Programme (SMNP) spread-headed by Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL).
EESL usually follows a model where state discoms that deploy prepaid meters make no payment upfront for the equipment. EESL incurs all the expenditure and receives its dues from discoms based on the savings arising from the prepaid meter installations.
Bihar discoms gain
It may be recalled that during the peak of the pandemic’s first wave (April to June 2020), when most power discoms were struggling to receive payment as physical bills could not be dispatched, discoms in Bihar were collecting revenue of around Rs.5 lakh per day, thanks to prepaid meters. (Read full story).
The population of prepaid meters in Bihar is poised to rise in the coming months. EESL, on January 30, 2021, signed agreements with the two power discoms in Bihar – North Bihar Power Distribution Company Ltd and South Bihar Power Distribution Company Ltd – for installing 23.4 lakh prepaid meters in Bihar, as part of the SMNP.
Assam: First in northeast
Assam represents the initial steps in the eventual prepaid meter rollout in northeast India. In November 2019, IntelliSmart Infrastructure Pvt Ltd – a joint venture between EESL and National Investment & Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) – won India’s first competitively bid smart meter project to install six lakh prepaid meters in 19 circles in Assam. The project, with an estimated outlay of Rs.500 crore, is based on the “TOTEX” model which is a combination of the CAPEX and OPEX models. The entire expenditure will in defrayed by the project implementing agency, with no upfront payment by either the utility or the consumer.
Featured photograph is for representation only
