JioThings partners with EESL to deploy 1 mn smart prepaid meters in Bihar

JioThings Smart Utility Platform, an IoT (Internet of Things) solution of JioThings, has partnered with Energy Efficiency Services Limited to deploy 1 million smart prepaid meters in Bihar along with French electric utility firm EDF, according to a release.

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is the joint venture of leading Public Sector Enterprises under the Ministry of Power, set up by the government to facilitate energy efficiency projects and to work as energy service company.

JioThings Smart Utility Platform has partnered with EESL to enable 1 million smart prepaid meters in Bihar, the release said.

"JioThings Smart Utility Platform is a revolutionary NB-IoT (NarrowBand-Internet of Things) enabled future-ready solution from Jio Platforms and is backed by 4G/LTE technology, which will drive the digital transformation of the power utilities sector and help achieve the Ministry of Power and Government of India's aim of installing 250 million smart meters," the release added.

Jio Platforms' CEO Kiran Thomas said the smart utility platform will bring "transformational benefits" of latest smart technologies to the power sector.

"By empowering enterprises with cutting-edge, plug and play, smart solutions, we aim to accelerate the adoption of smart IoT solutions by enterprises and enable their digital transformation," Thomas said.

He added: "JioThings Smart Electricity Metering solution offers a comprehensive suite of highly scalable, smart and secure solutions through a combination of IoT platform, hardware, nationwide connectivity, installation and after sales services".

An EESL spokesperson observed that smart metering is the pivot around which India's next chapter of energy security reliability and consumer-driven market will be written.

"We are extremely pleased to have Jio as our IoT partner. With this success, we are certain that next generation communication technology that is 5G will further boost the smart metering deployments as other AMI service providers gain confidence in outsourcing to technology providers," the EESL spokesperson added.

JioThings' IoT enabled Smart Utility Platform is a flagship solution for enabling automated meter reading/ advanced metering infrastructure in India to enable pre-paid and post-paid metering.

The secure IoT powered platform simplifies meter management, giving utilities full visibility and control of its IoT-connected smart meters. The secure and scalable solution ensures reliable data collection and instantaneous two-way communication leading to cost optimisation and seamless experience by helping improve collections and efficiencies and eliminating service delays, the release explained.

JioThings' pioneering IoT platforms backed by Jio's future-proof 4G LTE and 5G networks provide clear advantages over legacy technologies and address the challenges of the legacy solutions such as limitations created by dwelling conditions, challenges of RF mesh and proprietary implementations, thereby accelerating the adoption of smart solutions, it added.