Retired electricity officials and unions highlight the huge expenditure involved in the installation of smart meters

Debate over smart meters in Tamil Nadu: Residents await automation, officials fear huge loss to Energy Department.

While a section of the residents are awaiting the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation limited (TNPDCL) to install smart meters for automating the bi-monthly electricity bills, retired electricity officials and union members say that the smart meters would cause a huge loss to the Energy Department. 

The TNPDCL had recently cancelled the tender for buying smart meters from Adani Energy Solutions Limited, part of the Adani Group. The Energy Department got good feedback from the residents at T. Nagar in Chennai to the smart meters installed as a pilot project under the Smart City project. The cancellation of the tender set back the automation of power bill generation and tariff collection. 

Consumer activist T. Sadagopan says electricity consumers have been severely affected by the power tariff hike effected in 2022. Adding to their woes is the fact the electricity meter assessors can cause their bills to be inflated by delaying the bi-monthly meter reading for a few days. He says the smart meters, programmed to assess the bi-monthly consumption, will help to avoid such a problem.

But retired electricity officials and a few electricity unions are against the installation of smart meters. They argue that the Energy Department would require ₹30,000 crore for buying three crore smart meters. 

S. Gandhi, president, Power Engineers Society of Tamilnadu (PESOT), says the Energy Department has already been grappling with a huge loss of ₹3.20 lakh crore. At this point, the proposal for automating the consumption assessment and tariff collection through the smart meter project, costing ₹30,000 crore, would be a wasteful expenditure.

Mr. Gandhi says smart meters would be helpful only in respect of those using more than 200 units. But, according to the government data, there are just 1.50 crore consumers using over 200 units out of the 2.32 crore domestic consumers in the State. While the cost of a bi-directional meter (which is being used now) is ₹1,600, that of a smart meter would be ₹14,400, he adds.