Srinagar, Oct 20: The J&K government on Wednesday said that it is planning to install eight lakh smart electricity meters by 2023.
As per a J&K government handout, Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha while chairing the Administrative Council meeting in Srinagar, authorized the Jammu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd. (JPDCL) and Kashmir Distribution Corporation Ltd. (KPDCL) to implement smart metering project in J&K.
Farooq Khan and Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, Advisors to the Lieutenant Governor, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta, Chief Secretary, J&K and Nitishwar Kumar, Principal Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor attended the meeting.
Under the smart metering project, 6 lakh smart/prepaid meters will be installed across Jammu and Kashmir through RECPDCL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rural Electrification Corporation under the Ministry of Power, Government of India, the handout said. This is apart from the 2 lakh smart meters currently being installed in Jammu and Srinagar under the Prime Minister’s Development Programme (PMDP), it added.
The ‘Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme’ mainly focuses on reforms in the power sector to improve quality and reliability of power supply to consumers through a financially and operationally efficient distribution sector.
As per the government handout, smart meters “will bring about transparency in metering, billing and collection which will eventually reduce power losses and ensure quality and reliable power supply to consumers”.
The meters will be read remotely in Data Centre at Srinagar and Data Recovery Centre at Jammu through communication channels, which will also facilitate the distribution Corporations to know the status of power supply at consumer end and also take prompt action, it said.
As per the handout, the power distribution sector of the UT of J&K has a total consumer base of nearly 21 lakhs, out of which metered consumers are only about 50%.
“The poor consumer metering is the main reasons for huge AT&C losses which go 50% in Jammu and Kashmir against the national average of 22%, ” it added.