 "Kanpur takes lead over Gurgaon in race to get smart power grid")
Kanpur has taken a lead over Millennium City Gurgaon in the race to get the first “smart” grid in the country.
The Kanpur Electricity Supply Company (Kesco) has got the approval from the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government to choose a vendor who will set up the smart grid systems. Kesco officials confirmed they had received the approval.
Kanpur, about 70 km southwest of UP capital Lucknow, getting approval before Gurgaon is ironic, as the Samajwadi Party government in the state is in the Opposition at the Centre. Gurgaon on the other hand is a part of the National Capital Region, and Haryana has a Bharatiya Janata Party government.
Kanpur is the second largest urban industrial area in north India, after Delhi, and is famous for exporting leather products. It is also the favoured destination of many engineering students, as it is host to a premier Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Under the National Smart Grid Mission (NSGM), 30% funding will be provided by the Centre and 20% by the state. The balance will be come from Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and the vendor selected to execute the project.
A smart grid is an electrical grid, including a variety of operational and energy measures such as “smart” meters, appliances, renewable energy resources, and energy efficiency resources. It generally refers to electricity delivery systems that use computer-based remote control and automation. The estimated cost of the Kanpur project is Rs 320 crore.
NSGM has representation from various stakeholders such as distribution companies, regulators, electrical manufactures, Central Electricity Authority of India, and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy to execute smart grid and allied projects.
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“RECTPCL — the transmission arm of REC — is the facilitator for the smart grid mission in the city. The bidding guidelines would stipulate that the vendor would also make some investment in the project. It will receive outcome basis returns from Kesco,” said a senior power ministry officer.
Officials said it would be a risk-return investment. “The model is likely to be service or partial-service model, more like escrow,” said a senior officer.
Gurgaon, which was announced last year as the first smart grid city, has been unsuccessful thrice in choosing a vendor. Kesco, however, is confident of issuing tenders by the year-end and commence work before March next year.
Election to the UP state Assembly is scheduled in February, 2017.
The makeover of the electricity grid in Kanpur would also include Cloud-based infrastructure, outage management systems and demand-side monitoring. Kesco already has a text message service for outage information and has a Twitter handle to keep consumers posted about their ongoing work.
The company has a turnover of Rs 1,900 crore now. It caters to 539,000 consumers in the Kanpur city area. In the past, the city’s experiment with a private discom failed because of political discord.
The agreement signed under Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) puts the aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses of Uttar Pradesh to the tune of 26.5%. The billing efficiency is close to 90%.
Kesco is one of the five discoms in UP, which have signed up for the UDAY power reforms. The scheme, announced last year, envisages financial and operational turnaround of the stressed discoms.
One of the first steps enlisted in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) is taking over of debt of state-owned discoms and issuing bonds against it by respective state government. Apart from financial improvements, the discoms would need to improve operational efficiency. Major targets are reducing AT&C losses from current levels to 15% by 2019. Improving collection and billing efficiency, reducing energy theft, reducing gap between average cost of supply and average revenue realised of discoms are also targets.