AMR solution for large customers

Mumbai, India — (METERING.COM) — January 31, 2008 – India’s Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) Undertaking intends to deploy an AMR solution for its larger customers, in an effort to monitor actual consumption and identify possible power theft. The system will go live within six months, and at that stage meter data will be collected remotely by GSM modems and data concentrators, and sent back to the utility’s offices.

BEST officials say the real-time readings will help it to plan better, and also to identify anomalies in power usage – which could indicate that a user is tampering with the meter – much more quickly. The system will be deployed in hotels, shopping malls and other customers that are large users of power.

The utility also plans to introduce an online billing service for all its customers, in order to improve customer service. At present only bulk consumers are able to access their bills online. It will also extend its prepayment (pay-as-you-go) meter offering to residential customers once its vending system has been upgraded.