7th edition of Metering India seminar flagged off at New Delhi

New Delhi: The 7th edition of Metering India seminar was flagged off on April 6 at Hotel Le Meridian, New Delhi. The Chief Guest of the Conference were Governor of Punjab, Shri V P Singh Badnore. Other dignitaries present on the occasion were Shri R K Verma, Chairperson CEA, Ms.Ritu Maheshwari, CEO-RECTPCL, Mr.Richard Schomberg, Chairperson –System Committee, Smart Energy, IEC. The event focused on diverse perspectives and experiences in order to add tremendous value to the participating delegates through this collective knowledge sharing process, that included all aspects of metering domain like smart meters, communication technologies, energy conservation, IT infrastructure, smart meter pilot roll-out so far etc.

Shri VP Singh Badnore, Governor of Punjab said, “The real challenge is the distribution sector. Financial weak discoms are the weakest link and unfortunately the sector is ailing and is not in a good shape. Thus it is required to review the Electricity Act 2003 with special focus on distribution. We need to strengthen and give more autonomy to SERC and CERC and look into a way forward to open access and have a plausible distribution licensing system with multiple licensing system to ushering competition.”

Shri RK Verma, Chairperson, CEA articulated, “The need of the hour is to transform ourselves from static meters to smart metering solutions otherwise we will be struggling to resolve the issue of grid operations. Under NSGM, DDGJY, and IPDS we are funding projects for smart metering solutions. We also urge makers of smart meters to bring uniformity and ultimately bring down the price of Smart Meters. A sustainable business models should be developed based on holistic benefits of Smart Grid implementation.”

Smt. Ritu Maheshwari, CEO-RECTPCL said during the seminar, “Huge potential is there for everyone, not only for the government but also for the private players to deliver and to seize opportunity. These times are very crucial, never before earlier has the power sector of the country has seen so much of transparency, so much of accountability for everyone”.

Speaking on the occasion, IEEMA Vice President Mr. Harish Agarwal, mentioned, “We are on the threshold of another revolution, a digital revolution. Technologies are touching our lives like never before. In distribution utilities, Smart technologies should be complemented with smart business processes to get true benefit out of technology and reach new levels of consumer satisfaction. We would like to thrust the importance of cost and quality based procurement processes of utilities. Our consumer deserves world class services.”

Mr. Jitendra Agarwal, Chairman – Meter Division, IEEMA added, “Metering India 2017… Towards Smart and Sustainable Utilities aims at showcasing the global thought processes of the best minds in our ecosystem from policy, industry, utilities, regulatory, testing laboratories etc in order to cater to the blazing issues faced by various stakeholders. The conference is not only contributing towards making Utilities smart and sustainable but also enabling them to deploy resilient energy infrastructure in the nation”

“Today, 'smart' features are impacting our lives like never before. The ‘analog way of life’ till a few years back has been reinvented by ‘smart digital way of life’. The transparency and trust challenges are being answered through technology in every sector.” said Mr. Sunil Misra, Director General, IEEMA

The development of smart meters is a key component of grid modernization. Smart meters are used for monitoring the energy usages of consumers by recording time-differentiated energy consumption. Smart meters not only help consumers in managing their power demand but also assist distributing companies in detecting and locating outages and ensuring fast restoration of systems, monitoring the quality of electricity supply, and identifying meter tampering among other things. Owing to these functionalities, smart meters also form a vital component of advanced metering infrastructure.

Metering India provides a great platform to the relevant stakeholder to gain through the cumulative sectoral expertise and make a difference within their own operational areas from a sustainability standpoint.