PANAJI
The Union Power Ministry has pulled up Goa government over its consistent delay in implementing the Smart Metering Project, which was sanctioned to the coastal State way back in 2021 with a total budgetary provision of Rs 467 crore.
Interestingly, two months after Cabinet approved appointment of DigiSmart Networks Pvt Ltd as the service provider to replace existing electronic power meters with smart meters for 7.5 lakh consumers, the company is yet to be issued work order and with the work now expected to commence post monsoon.
Highly placed sources confirmed that the Union Power Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, during his visit to Goa last week, pulled up State Electricity department over delay in implementing the project and directed setting up of prepaid smart meters in all government establishments on priority. “The Minister has issued clear directions to ensure that the project is completed in the current financial year itself,” sources said.
However, the department intends to take up the project in phased manner for over two-and-half years. And to begin with commercial meters and three-phase meters would be replaced with the smart metering.
Despite repeated attempts, Power Minister Ramakrishna Dhavalikar and Chief Electrical Engineer Stephan Fernandes remained unavailable for the comments.
According to the Electricity Department, smart meters function on a real-time basis and record and store all electrical parameters such as consumption of energy, voltage and current levels, etc. The data will be used by the department for billing, to monitor power quality, load scheduling, demand management and fault analysis.
As per the data released by the Union Ministry, Goa is one amongst few States whose progress on smart meters, distribution transformer meters (DTM) and feeder meter installation is nil. The Ministry has sanctioned smart meters to around 7, 41, 160 consumers while 8,369 DTM and 827 feeder meters.
Under the Revamped Distribution Scheme (RDS), Goa’s initial target date for implementation of smart electricity meters was March 2023, which was later extended to March 2024 and thereafter to March 2025.
