Electricity meters to go digital by Dec in Chennai
Posted on: 22/Jan/2014 2:42:37 PM
The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation’s (Tangedco) decision to replace all electromechanical meters, which were installed many years ago, with digital meters, also called ‘static meters’, in the city was conceived of as an effort to plug its revenue losses.
There have been frequent complaints of faults in meter readings from domestic consumers. Apart from the revenue loss caused to Tangedco by faulty meters, domestic consumers have to run from pillar to post to get their old meters replaced.
Consumers, in certain cases, have also been penalised for faulty meter readings wherein the bill is calculated on the basis of average bi-monthly readings.Tangedco has proposed to procure around 61, 50,000 digital meters for the entire State.
A senior official at Tangedco, comparing electromechanical and digital meters, said the latter have better accuracy, fewer defects and do not suffer from wear-and-tear. Also, digital meters are procured only after being tested and approved by the Central Power Research Institute, Bangalore.
