India Smart Meter Market Update

Subscribe To Download This Insight

4Q 2018 | IN-5247

On August 21, 2018, Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) opened the price bid for 4.5 million single-phase smart meters and 0.5 million three-phase smart meters with GPRS-based communication modules. Founded in 2010, EESL is the resource procurement center for the government of India and initiated the e-procurement process, inviting international bids on August 3, 2018. According to the RFP, smart meter implementation is expected to be completed within 3 years.

Registered users can unlock up to five pieces of premium content each month.

Log in or register to unlock this Insight.

 

EESL India Announces International Bids for 5 Million Smart Meters

NEWS


On August 21, 2018, Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) opened the price bid for 4.5 million single-phase smart meters and 0.5 million three-phase smart meters with GPRS-based communication modules. Founded in 2010, EESL is the resource procurement center for the government of India and initiated the e-procurement process, inviting international bids on August 3, 2018. According to the RFP, smart meter implementation is expected to be completed within 3 years.

Large-Scale Smart Metering Implementations Kickstart after Pilots

IMPACT


With more than 300 million electricity metering points, India is potentially the second biggest market for smart meters in the world after China. The government of India and the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited have announced ambitious road maps to upgrade the power grid by 2030. Such recent announcements have spurred a lot of activity, with both domestic and international meter vendors bidding for contracts, some of which have proceeded to pilot stages. Over a 2-year trial period starting in 2016, 18 utilities have trialed smart meters using different connectivity technologies. The deployments are spearheaded by the Smart Grid Task Force, backed by US$4 billion in funding for smart metering programs. This is the second RFP announced this year; the first RFP for 5 million smart meters was completed in 4Q 2017 and was won by a state-owned ICT manufacturer ITI with a bid at US$35/unit, which includes an embedded cellular 2G/3G module. The smart meter implementation is expected to commence in 3Q 2018 and end by 2021.

Other smart metering activities in India include the Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL), a joint venture of the Delhi government and Tata Power and Landis+Gyr, which jointly announced rollout of 200,000 smart meters in September 2017 using the proprietary RF mesh solution, Canopy. In July 2018, TPDDL started its implementation of 200,000 smart meters and plans to expand its smart meter installed base to 1.6 million customers by the end of 2025.

Local Smart Meter Vendors Trump International Vendors

RECOMMENDATIONS


The existing electricity distribution network in India is widely considered not a stable Power Line Communication (PLC) solution, but with some upgrades to the network, PLC solutions have satisfied the functional requirements of the utilities. While RF mesh has been successfully trialed by a few utilities, the 865 MHz to 867 MHz RF spectrum is considered too small of a slice, and unless the government releases more RF spectrum for smart grid deployments, mass deployments will be a challenge using RF mesh. Part of the challenge for RF mesh is that many industry bodies and advocacy groups in India have specific requests for unlicensed spectrum. In addition, utilities often practice scheduled power cuts to manage peak loads. Due to these scheduled power cuts, mesh networks will be required to frequently reform within a short span of time, which is seen as another drawback by domestic utilities.

In mid-2008, the government of India launched the Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Program (R-APDRP), which was involved in upgrading the sub-transmission and distribution network. AMI initiatives under R-APDRP using GPRS/CDMA had been poor, and results have observed reliability of 50% to 60% across various states. PLC implementations with concentrators using GPRS connectivity were undertaken by Mangalore Electricity Supply Company (MESCOM) 7 years ago; while the results were positive for the last-mile PLC technology, cellular connectivity using GPRS had issues with poor network coverage and reliability. However, cellular network coverage, especially 2G and 3G coverage, in India has been growing both in urban and rural areas to support the exponential growth of mobile phone users. While the experience with cellular connectivity in earlier smart meter trials has been discouraging, the cellular network coverage has vastly improved in the country. Currently, 2G has the most network coverage in India, followed by 3G and 4G. Based on the roadmap set by the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited and the government of India, mass rollout of smart electricity meters was expected to start by the beginning of 2018 after evaluating the results of the pilot programs. The recent RFPs for smart electricity meters have stated a minimum requirement of 2G connectivity for fallback with primary connectivity using 3G/4G/NB-IoT/LTE-M. Although there are no cellular LPWA networks currently available in India, Reliance Jio in partnership with Samsung has been testing NB-IoT network in Mumbai.

Furthermore, based on EESL RFPs, the smart meter implementations from the government-owned utilities are primarily targeted at reducing their non-technical losses in the electricity distribution network. From previous contract wins in early 2018, the average selling price of these meters is expected to be under US$30 for the meter and around US$5 for the cellular communication module. Companies such as Landis+Gyr, Honeywell, Itron, and other international meter vendors have stayed away from participating in the EESL-led smart meter tenders. Most international smart meter vendors don’t want to participate in the EESL tenders, which are seen as solely being contested on cost and will be largely favorable to domestic meter manufacturers. Looking ahead, the India smart meter market will likely stay dominated by local meter suppliers like the LED street lighting market, with an emphasis on basic features and low hardware costs. In addition, low cost also dictates that cellular module costs will need to be low as well. Chinese module vendors will likely be successful because they already compete heavily on price within their home market.

Services

Companies Mentioned