‘Metering India’ powered by IEEMA, is a biennial event organized in collaboration with metering companies & various stakeholders in the electrical ecosystem and provides for a platform to metering companies to exchange perspective on metering, and the utilities to adopt new technologies.
The session was inaugurated by Chief Guest – Alok Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Power, Govt. of India. Mr. Kumar emphasized on safety, cost reduction and quality of smart meter manufacturing and expansion of the RDSS scheme and smart distribution in India. He raised a concern on sustainable disposal of old, discarded meters and urged that IEEMA should focus on the above as well as consumers connect and make smart meters affordable and capacity building of the utilities.
Mr. Rohit Pathak, President, IEEMA and CEO, Birla Copper Hindalco Industries Limited, expressed that smart meter is a key enabler for India’s transition to an electrified, digital, sustainable and net zero economy.
Out of 20+ metering companies in India, the CEOs of top five manufacturers started the CEOs roundtable on ‘Industry Perspective – Opportunities and Challenges’ to validate the industry’s potential to deploy 100 million smart meters per year. Luis Goncalves, Group CEO of Iskraemeco, was one amongst the five panelists.
“Understanding and focusing on consumer requirements and behaviour is extremely important,” emphasized Luis. He mentioned that data extracted from smart meters is extremely important for assessing consumer demand and their usage patterns. He also deliberated on flexibility to adapt to every environment, interoperability and critical infrastructure to implement a proper security system for data protection. Forecast, i.e. having a clarity of the future and collaboration with supply chain, he added, would be significant in the success of smart meter deployment in India. Other industry experts added that metering is pride of India and truly ‘Made in India’ and India has come a long way in the metering sphere.
The two-day conference reflected on the opportunities and upcoming new technologies to make most of the opportune moment. One of the largest such event in India, it witnessed an attendance of more than 500 delegates from more than 75 utilities, PSUs and Government Institutions and 20 technical papers were presented in 5 sessions on diverse topics and 4 panel discussions.
