Eight lakh smart meters to be installed in J-K by 2023

SRINAGAR — The Administrative Council (AC), which met here today under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, 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, six 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.

Currently, two lakh smart meters are being installed in Jammu and Srinagar under the Prime Minister’s Development Programme (PMDP).

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.

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.

Pertinently, 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%.