India’s ITI emerges lowest bidder for smart meter project

smart meter India project

Energy Efficiency Services (EESL) has achieved 8 percent price reduction from Rs 2,722 to Rs 2,503 for the procurement of 50 lakh smart meters during the reverse auction of the tender conducted last week.

ITI has emerged as the lowest bidder (L1 bidder) in this reverse auction – quoting the lowest price of Rs 2,503 per single phase smart meter, followed by Genus Power and KEONICS.

L&T had emerged as the lowest bidder in the first round of bids conducted last week after quoting Rs 2,722.

The lower price discovered through reverse auction will further benefit the end consumers. Seven companies including L&T were invited for the reverse auction, as per tender terms and conditions where L&T has been outbid by ITI, Genus Power and KEONICS.

As per government guidelines, EESL will invite Genus Power and KEONICS, who have emerged as the L2 and L3 bidders respectively, to match the L1 price.  Should the said parties match the L1 price, EESL will split the procurement of the single phase smart meter between three parties in a ratio of 50:30:20.

The meters will be installed over a period of 3 years in a phased manner in Uttar Pradesh UP) and Haryana.

The procurement conducted by EESL, a company under the administrative control of Ministry of Power, Government of India (GoI), is the world’s largest single Smart Meter procurement. 40 lakh smart meters will be deployed in UP and the remaining 10 lakh in Haryana.

Smart meters are a part of the overall Advanced Metering Infrastructure Solutions (AMI) aimed at better demand response designed to reduce energy consumption during peak hours. The AMI solution will also have a system integrator who will be responsible for meter installation, data storage on cloud, preparing dashboards, etc. The bid for the system integrator is expected to open on October 31, 2017.

EESL is procuring the smart meters and services of the system integrator with full investment and the utilities will make zero-investment. The repayment to EESL will be through savings resulting from enhanced billing efficiency, avoided meter reading costs, etc. The average cost of meter reading is Rs 40 per meter, which will be completely avoided.