The government on Wednesday signed a pact with Chinese major Dong Fong for introducing smart meters in the city.
The total cost of the project is Rs. 46.1 crore with the Centre contributing 50 per cent. The project will initially cover 34,000 connections in the Boulevard region and will be extended to the remaining areas of the city in phases.
Sriram, project manager of Dong Feng, and K. Mathivanan, Superintending Engineer I of Puducherry Electricity Department, signed the MoU in the presence of Electricity Minister R. Kamalakannan in his chamber at the Assembly.
The Smart Grid Project evolved by the Power Ministry’s India Smart Grid Task force was initially rolled out in 2013 to cover 87,000 services in the urban divisions of the city. While the Centre agreed to fund 50 per cent of the project, the remaining was to be shared by the Utility (Puducherry government).
The project envisaged a Consumer-Utility interactive pilot smart grid which would cover Smart metering and control through Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Peak Load Management in the Puducherry Urban Distribution Sub-division.
“The Power Grid Corporation of India, which was the nodal agency under the National Smart Grid Mission, volunteered to fund the Utility portion and around 1,600 smart meters were installed in the Saram region. However, the pilot project failed to take off as the Power Grid did not get support from collaborators due to various reasons, including lack of market,” an official said.
The Power Grid Corporation expressed its inability to the government in 2013 to take up the project citing financial and technology constraints and urged the government to fund the utility share of Rs.23.05 crore to complete the pilot project.
However, the government was not in a position to allocate funds from its budget owing to financial constraints. The Department decided to implement the project under Investors Model. Dong Fong, which has presence in Singapore and South Korea, was selected as the investor-cum-service provider through e-tendering.
