SHILLONG, Feb 25: It was a significant day on February 24, 2021 for the power consumers in Meghalaya as well as MeECL. Meghalaya’s first smart electricity meter was installed in the official residence of state Power Minister James K Sangma and the second one in the official residence of CMD MeECL.
In the next few months nearly 2 lakh smart meters will be installed across Meghalaya under the funding from ADB. Good news is that the two pilot meters are working perfectly fin since their installation, according to a source in MeECL.
The benefits and salient features of smart meters:
- Smart usage- Enabling consumers to see exactly how much energy they are using and when they are using it thus enabling them to track and reduce consumption as required.
- Accuracy- You pay what you use. The problems of under billing, overbilling, non-billing will no longer be there.
- No standing in queues to pay the bills since everything is online.
- Time-of-use tariffs: These are different to the current electricity bills sent to customers in that they split daytime and night energy consumption into different time periods, each of which has different price. This enables us to create tariffs adjusted to ‘off-peak’ periods with lower prices and encouraging customers to adjust their consumption so that they use energy when it’s cheaper. This may be introduced in future.
- Lower operational costs, improved customer service- By improved billing and no manual readings, operational costs will be reduced and the same manpower can be used for system strengthening, operation and maintenance.
- Improved control-By two way communications between the home and MeECL, there can be remote connection and disconnection without the lineman entering the premises.
- The meters come with both prepaid and post-paid facility. We will initially roll out post-paid operations.
- MeECL will be able to conduct power-quality analysis in near-real time, taking into consideration factors such as maximum demand, voltage fluctuation, outage detection etc.
- They are tamper proof. Anyone trying to break the seal of the meter, meter will send alert signals to MeECL thus preventing electricity theft.
- Better billing and collection efficiency will help MeECL turnaround the fortunes.
- All precautions have been taken to protect the consumer information.