L&T lowest bidder for Rs 1.3K cr smart meter tender of EESL

State-owned EESL today said Larson & Toubro (L&T) has emerged as the lowest bidder of the tender issued by it for the procurement of 50 lakh smart meters to be installed in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
At the rate of Rs 2,722 per smart meter quoted by L&T, the total worth of order works out to be Rs 1,361 crore.
"L&T has emerged as the lowest bidder of the tender issued by Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) to procure 50 Lakh smart meters," the EESL said in a statement.
According to the statement, the company has been selected through an international competitive bidding. The meters will be installed over a period of 3 years in a phased manner in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. L&T quoted the lowest price of Rs 2,722 per smart meter.

It claimed that it was the worlds largest single smart meter procurement tender.
As many as 14 players from around the world participated in the tender. Around 40 lakh smart meters will be deployed in Uttar Pradesh and the remaining 10 lakh in Haryana. The price quoted by L&T is 40-50 per cent lower than the current market rates.

The smart meters are a part of the overall Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution aimed at better demand response designed to reduce energy consumption during peak hours.
The overall AMI solution will also have a system integrator who will be responsible for meter installation, data storage on cloud, preparing dashboards etc. The bids for the system integrator will open on October 31, 2017.

The meters are being procured for implementation of smart grid projects in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh since these states grapple with huge AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses, with the latest figures for both the states being 28.42 per cent and 34.36 per cent, respectively.
The smart meters will help these states in not only significantly reducing their AT&C losses by way of increased billing efficiency, but will completely change the way in which electrical energy is presently being consumed and paid by the consumers.
The installation of these smart meters along with its associated communication and IT infrastructure will enable the DISCOMs to obtain real time energy consumption data of each consumer for subsequent analysis.

The smart meters procured by the EESL use GPRS technology to allow 2way communication between the DISCOM and consumers. Once installed, an energy supplier can read a meter via mobile phone network.
Householders can also receive a digital display which helps them to access how much power they are consuming and its cost in real time.
The smart meters enable one to see the consumption pattern and the cost. This means one can adapt the energy use and cut down on waste to provide financial savings to consumers. They further provide an accurate and real-time information about the energy use, enabling one to take informed decisions about their energy behaviour.

EESL is procuring the smart meters and services of the system integrator with 100 per cent investment and the utilities will make zero-investment. The repayment to EESL will be through savings resulting from enhanced billing efficiency, avoided meter reading costs, etc.
It is said that the average cost of meter reading is Rs 40 per meter, which will be completely avoided, the EESL said.