The central government on Thursday notified the timeline for replacing the existing meters with smart prepaid meters. 

As per the government notification, all consumers, except agricultural consumers, in areas with communication network, shall be supplied electricity with these meters. 

 

The government has notified the timeline for replacing the existing meters with ‘smart prepaid’ meters having a facility to enable the ‘prepayment’ feature. As per the Ministry of Power notification, all consumers (other than agricultural consumers) in areas with communication networks, will be supplied electricity with smart meters. The notification applies to all consumers, other than agricultural, in areas with communication networks and the replacement work will complete in two phases by December 2023 and March 2025. The Power Ministry had last week advised all central ministries and departments to switch to prepaid smart electricity meters. The ministries have also been asked to issue all enabling orders in this.

 

Here are the details of the Power Ministry notification:

All consumers (other than agricultural consumers) in areas with a communication network, shall be supplied electricity with smart meters working in prepayment mode, conforming to relevant IS, within the timelines specified below:

All Union Territories, eclectrical divisions having more than 50% consumers in urban areas with AT&C losses more than 15% in financial year 2019-20, other electrical divisions with AT&C losses more than 25% in financial year 2019-20, all Government offices at Block level and above, and all industrial and commercial consumers, shall be metered with smart meters with prepayment mode by December, 2023:

All consumer connections having current carrying capacity beyond that specified in relevant IS, may be provided with smart meters having AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) facility, it added.

All feeders and distribution transformers (DTs) shall be provided with meters having AMR facility or covered under AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), as per the notification.

All feeders shall be metered by December 2022.

All DTs in electrical divisions having more than 50 per cent consumers in urban areas with AT&C losses more than 15 per cent in 2019-20, and in all other electrical divisions with AT&C losses more than 25 per cent in FY20, shall be metered by December 2023.

All DTs in other areas shall be metered by March 2025.

This notification shall be effective from the date of publishing in the Gazette of India (August 19, 2021), it stated.