The two-day “Metering India 2019” event, an international seminar organized by IEEMA Meter Division, received an overwhelming response with the presence of more than 530 delegates. Concluded recently, this was the eighth edition of “Metering India” running on the theme “Widening Horizons”.
The conference highlighted key challenges and knowledge sharing on various aspects of metering including communication systems, emerging technologies, design and testing, and data acquisition and management. The conference also showcased best practices in metering space.
Harish Agarwal – President, IEEMA, was of the view, “A new range of ‘smart meters’ can bring efficiency to how India manages its electricity, by checking data-entry errors and billing efficiencies and cutting the costs of manual meter reading through web-based monitoring system”.
The two-day session witnessed panel discussion and paper presentation on various aspects of Metering segment. Among the 22 papers presented during the two day session, three papers were selected for best paper awards:
- Sylvain Vittecoq from Cyan Connode, Stockholm, Sweden was presented with the first ‘Best Paper Award’ on “A model for evaluating different communication technologies for AMI”.
- The second-best Paper Award was presented to Ms. Nimisha Chauhan from Secure Meters on “A journey towards intrastate DSM”.
- P.K. Patnaik from OPTCL received the third best paper award for his paper on “Practical Issues & Solutions for Energy Metering System among Power Players”.
Ashish Tandon – Chairman, IEEMA Meter Division, said, “The Indian metering industry is fully capable of delivering 24 million smart prepaid meters. We have all the desired capacity and capabilities to design, develop, manufacture and ship these meters from state of art manufacturing units within India, which is fully aligned with our Honourable Prime minister’s vision of “Make In India”. However, we require support from the utilities and the ministry to fulfil this vision; firstly a realistic time frame to be laid down so that the goal can be achieved practically. Secondly, consolidation of technologies is required and thirdly realistic price expectations; if we get the right volumes, we will surely achieve the right price and lastly we have to move from buyer-seller L1 mode to partnership mode.”
