The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) is replacing the existing electricity consumption meters with electronic ones for domestic and commercial consumers in the city.
An official of Tangedco told The Hindu here on Saturday that the meter replacement work has been taken up under the Union Government’s Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme.
Works such as erection of new transformers, taking overhead electricity cables underground and fixing new meters have been taken up in several parts of the district at a total cost of Rs. 350 crore.
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The city has nearly 4.5 lakh service connections and 70 per cent of these are domestic and commercial. Works started a couple of months ago and will be completed in six months.
The new meters have been installed for 7,000 consumers so far.
The official explained that most of the consumers have the conventional electro-mechanical meters or an upgraded version of electro-mechanical meters. These will be replaced with static meters.
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These meters will register the demand apart from the consumption.
It will be easier to download several data related to consumption with these meters.
The local officials of Tangedco are visiting the consumers with the new meters and replacing the old ones.
With regard to load shedding, the official said there are temporary problems in some thermal stations.
However, though it is not the peak wind season, wind energy generation is good and it goes up to 500 MW on some days.
The generation is picking up only after 11 a.m. Hence, there are power cuts till 10 a.m.
While urban and rural consumers have about a couple of hours of load shedding a day for the last one week, those in the city are experiencing 45 minutes to an hour of load shedding.
Load shedding duration is expected to go up in March and April and the Tangedco is expected to schedule the load shedding for the next two months.