Late last week, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced that the Goa government was pausing the rollout of smart meters after complaints, including from ministers, MLAs, and others within the BJP, began to mount against the seemingly arbitrary rollout and the high costs involved. Smart meters, the government said, was a step towards the future and would give power in the hands of the consumer, allow for prepaid metering, enable real time power consumption tracking via an app and ultimately enable the government to charge a variable power rate -- high cost for units used during peak hours and a low rate or free units during non-peak hours when an abundance of solar and other renewable power is available in the grid and allow consumers, especially those living abroad keep track and remotely control the power supply to their homes.
Those who had solar panels installed would also be able to keep track in real time of how much energy their units were generating, how much they were consuming locally, and how much was being supplied to the grid. And while those are undoubtedly benefits, the issues concerning the rollout left many questions unanswered.
Among them were questions about the manner in which the contractor was selected, the seemingly opaque manner in which the contract was handed over to the private company, the cost incurred to the government in doing so, and ultimately, how much of that cost would be passed on to the consumer. There were other concerns too, especially regarding data protection, because, as Congress MLA Adv Carlos Alvares Ferreira pointed out, in the wrong hands, the data will offer a neat map of which houses are closed and for how many months of the year, making those who are remotely keeping track of their ancestral homes especially worried about using such data to target locked homes. The data could also fall in the hands of advertisers, hackers and other people who do not necessarily mean well, and given the government’s track record of keeping public data confidential, such concerns cannot easily be brushed aside.
But more than that, where the government failed is in effectively communicating its plans for the smart meter rollout -- why they are doing it, how it will benefit the consumer, what the costs involved are, and whether or not this will lead to an increase in electricity bills. It must be remembered that it was not too long ago that the government had rolled out digital meters for all consumers across the state. At the time, the government sold it as a new, tamper-proof technology that would last a lifetime, reduce power losses and help the government mop up losses. To then, within a few years, essentially tell the consumers that the recently installed digital meters are obsolete would naturally come as a surprise. It must also be understood that whenever a new technology is being rolled out, a certain degree of suspicion is not only natural but also warranted.
However, the manner in which the government has handled the entire issue has only fuelled suspicion that they have something to hide and are forcing on the consumers a product that the consumers are already deeply suspicious about. The government needs to come clean on its smart meter plans, explain to the public the benefits of the smart meter and, more importantly, tell the public that the process of procuring smart meters is completely transparent and does not involve out of turn benefits to any private supplier.
