Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has planned to install smart electricity meters in 90,000 homes in Kathmandu by the end of 2020 with an aim to reduce electricity leakage in the distribution system and improve network visibility.
According to managing director of NEA Kul Man Ghising, the project will design, supply and install advanced metering infrastructure – smart meters and associated facilities – for the entire Valley and the industrial sector.
The smart meters are being installed in areas that fall under the Ratnapark and Maharajgunj distribution centres. Since fiscal year 2018-19, the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation had introduced a special programme in the budget to distribute smart meters in Kathmandu Valley. Financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the project is under the first phase of the Power Transmission and Distribution Efficiency Enhancement Project. The $150-million project envisages modernising the electricity grid by installing advanced metering infrastructure to reduce power losses, improve collection efficiency, and manage electricity demand and outages faster, according to the state power utility.
Likewise, the consumer households with smart meters will also get a regular and accurate view of electricity consumption, besides high-quality electricity supply eliminating the need to use voltage stabilisers, and faster recovery from power outages, it said, adding that the smart meters will also enable automated billing system, and meter readers will not have to visit individual houses each month and give customers a bill. The entire system will be monitored from the NEA office like how they do at Nepal Telecom for their landline connections.
Though, the smart metering rollout programme is in its early stages, it will be deployed in various phases across the electricity distribution network across the country. “It is envisaged to conduct six smart metering pilot projects in six distribution centres by September 2020, deploy 450,000 smart meters by May 2021, some 3 million smart meters by May 2023, and 5 million smart meters in total by May 2025,” according to the ADB.
Chinese firm Pinggao-Wisdom has won the contract to install smart meters as the lowest bidder Huizhou Zhongcheng Electric Technology had submitted fake bid documents.
Pinggao-Wisdom has quoted a price of Rs 81.08 million to install 90,000 smart electricity meters.
According to the Kathmandu Valley Smart Metering Project coordinator Juju Ratna Shakya, the contractor has begun collecting meter data of the targeted households. “The contractor is expected to install and operate the automated metering system by December 2020,” he said, adding that automating the distribution network by fitting smart meters is consistent with the effort to reduce electricity distribution losses to 8.5 per cent within this fiscal year by strengthening the power delivery infrastructure.
Although the power utility has slashed transmission and distribution losses to 15.32 per cent, which has saved Rs 7 billion in the past three years, the NEA is still unable to bank in a substantial 1,156.85 gigawatt hours of energy owing to such losses.
The reduction of distribution losses is considered by energy officials to be a fundamental effort consistent with achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (Sustainable Energy for All) as well as Nepal’s Nationally Determined Contributions for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The ADB has provided $150 million as a 32-year term concessional loan at 1 per cent interest during the eight-year grace period and 1.5 per cent interest after the grace period under the distribution enhancement project.
According to the development partner, the power utility will require about $500 million to rollout 5 million smart meters across Nepal; and a major part of this amount will cover the purchase of smart meters – including communication modules – meter boxes and communication infrastructure like data concentrator units, gateways and routers.
According to managing director of NEA Kul Man Ghising, the project will design, supply and install advanced metering infrastructure – smart meters and associated facilities – for the entire Valley and the industrial sector.
The smart meters are being installed in areas that fall under the Ratnapark and Maharajgunj distribution centres. Since fiscal year 2018-19, the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation had introduced a special programme in the budget to distribute smart meters in Kathmandu Valley. Financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the project is under the first phase of the Power Transmission and Distribution Efficiency Enhancement Project. The $150-million project envisages modernising the electricity grid by installing advanced metering infrastructure to reduce power losses, improve collection efficiency, and manage electricity demand and outages faster, according to the state power utility.
Likewise, the consumer households with smart meters will also get a regular and accurate view of electricity consumption, besides high-quality electricity supply eliminating the need to use voltage stabilisers, and faster recovery from power outages, it said, adding that the smart meters will also enable automated billing system, and meter readers will not have to visit individual houses each month and give customers a bill. The entire system will be monitored from the NEA office like how they do at Nepal Telecom for their landline connections.
Though, the smart metering rollout programme is in its early stages, it will be deployed in various phases across the electricity distribution network across the country. “It is envisaged to conduct six smart metering pilot projects in six distribution centres by September 2020, deploy 450,000 smart meters by May 2021, some 3 million smart meters by May 2023, and 5 million smart meters in total by May 2025,” according to the ADB.
Chinese firm Pinggao-Wisdom has won the contract to install smart meters as the lowest bidder Huizhou Zhongcheng Electric Technology had submitted fake bid documents.
Pinggao-Wisdom has quoted a price of Rs 81.08 million to install 90,000 smart electricity meters.
According to the Kathmandu Valley Smart Metering Project coordinator Juju Ratna Shakya, the contractor has begun collecting meter data of the targeted households. “The contractor is expected to install and operate the automated metering system by December 2020,” he said, adding that automating the distribution network by fitting smart meters is consistent with the effort to reduce electricity distribution losses to 8.5 per cent within this fiscal year by strengthening the power delivery infrastructure.
Although the power utility has slashed transmission and distribution losses to 15.32 per cent, which has saved Rs 7 billion in the past three years, the NEA is still unable to bank in a substantial 1,156.85 gigawatt hours of energy owing to such losses.
The reduction of distribution losses is considered by energy officials to be a fundamental effort consistent with achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (Sustainable Energy for All) as well as Nepal’s Nationally Determined Contributions for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The ADB has provided $150 million as a 32-year term concessional loan at 1 per cent interest during the eight-year grace period and 1.5 per cent interest after the grace period under the distribution enhancement project.
According to the development partner, the power utility will require about $500 million to rollout 5 million smart meters across Nepal; and a major part of this amount will cover the purchase of smart meters – including communication modules – meter boxes and communication infrastructure like data concentrator units, gateways and routers.
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