The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) will establish a data centre to store information on the power consumption pattern of consumers of 110 urban areas in the State.
While the main server will be maintained in Chennai, a back-up centre will come up in Madurai. The Board will invite tenders for the proposed data centre and the information technology implementing agency by the month-end, TNEB Chairman C.P. Singh told The Hindu over phone from Chennai.
“This project is expected to be completed in three years. It will have all the information regarding power supply and consumption and other details so as to cover the leakage. All data will be connected to this centralised server.” he said
The TNEB has computerised the billing and collection process. “We are adding this on to the whole system and undertaking a holistic development process,” said Mr. Singh.
Central scheme
The backup centre in Madurai would be called the Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) and manned by TNEB personnel trained for the purpose. While the DRC would be within the limits of the Madurai Corporation, the exact location was yet to be finalised, sources in TNEB Madurai Region said.
This project was being taken up under the Centre’s Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP), for which urban areas having population of over 30,000 would be eligible. A sum of Rs. 417 crore had been sanctioned for the 110 towns in Tamil Nadu.
According to the officials, while 146 municipalities, town panchayats and corporations in Tamil Nadu were eligible, 110 had been chosen for implementing this scheme.
Other projects
Under the R-APDRP, other projects such as the establishment of baseline data and IT applications for accounting energy such as consumer indexing Global Information System (GIS) mapping, automated metering in distribution transformers high tension feeders, MIS redressal of consumer grievances and IT-based consumer service centres were also being taken up. The Power Finance Corporation (PFC) is the nodal agency.
