EESL, NIIF Partner for Smart Meters Deployment Across India

EESL and NIIF have announced a new JV, IntelliSmart Infrastructure to implement, finance and operate the smart meters roll-out program of Discoms in India.

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) and National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) have announced a new Joint Venture, IntelliSmart Infrastructure Private Limited, to implement, finance and operate the smart meters roll-out program of power distribution companies in India.

The two firms in a joint press statement highlighted that the idea behind the JV is that smart meters will lay the foundation for smart grids which will be crucial to meet challenges of the evolving energy mix and the Government of India’s target of providing uninterrupted 24×7 power supply to every Indian.

The Government of India plans to install 25 crore smart meters in the next few years. With the replacement of 25 crore conventional meters with smart meters, billing efficiency can improve from 80 percent to 100 percent, and has the potential to increase Discoms revenues by Rs 1,104 billion.

EESL has been spearheading the smart meter deployment in India with the installation of over 6,25,000 Smart Meters. This partnership of NIIF & EESL will give a fillip to the Smart Meter ambition of the Government of India.

Saurabh Kumar, managing director, EESL stated that India has embarked upon a mission to reduce AT&C losses; proven world over for enabling universal, transparent and responsible energy consumption, and smart meters can play a central role in enabling such an endeavour.

“We are proud to have an established and experienced institution like NIIF partner with us in scaling our ongoing efforts to transform the market for this technology and to accelerate its application across the country. This venture will support the ambitions of ongoing government programmes, such as UDAY and National Smart Grid Mission.”

Sujoy Bose, managing director & CEO, NIIF added, that IntelliSmart will support the efforts of the Indian power sector as it strives towards delivering dependable 24/7 service to end-consumers. Smart meters will play a transformational role in bringing efficiencies and generating significant commercial benefits for power distribution companies, while at the same time empowering end- consumers to make informed choices regarding power consumption.

“We are delighted to partner with EESL, which has a proven track record of driving energy efficiency by operating at a substantial scale through its strong relationship with all stakeholders.”

With a focus on expediting the deployment of smart meters across the country, IntelliSmart will seek to operate at scale by leveraging the expertise and capital of both the shareholders, EESL and NIIF. It will work collaboratively with all stakeholders to procure, deploy and provide operations and maintenance for the smart meter infrastructure.

Leveraging its extensive experience with smart meters technology, EESL has already secured contracts for IntelliSmart to install and maintain over 1 crore smart meters across various state Discoms; the JV will work alongside EESL to scale this up further.