The Uttar Pradesh government is planning to procure 10 million prepaid meters under Saubhagya scheme that aims to provide electricity connections to over 4 crore families in rural and urban areas by December 2018.
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The Uttar Pradesh government is planning to procure 10 million prepaid meters under a Saubhagya scheme that aims to provide electricity connections to over 4 crore families in rural and urban areas by December 2018, reports Economic Times.
India had floated a global competitive-bidding tender for the same, following which leading national and international companies, including L&T, HPL, Landis and Gyr, Secure Meters, China-based Shenzhen Inhemeter, and Genus Power, have expressed their interest.
“We have issued a letter of interest for procurement of these pre-paid meters and about 15 companies have submitted their pre-qualification documents, which we are currently scrutinising. We will float the tender next week,” Energy Efficiency Services Managing Director Saurabh Kumar told ET.
The scheme has an outlay of Rs 16, 320 crores including budgetary allocation of Rs 12,320 crore.
India has been implementing other schemes like UJALA to promote efficient use of energy at the residential level as well as reduce the high initial costs thus facilitating higher uptake of LED lights by residential users.
Under this scheme, Energy Efficiency Services (EESL ) has distributed over 24, 2,18, 13, 748 in Uttar Pradesh, which had over 3, 29, 24, 266 households. The number of LED distributed is based on real-time data till November 24.
What are prepaid meters?
Prepaid meters allow consumers to recharge their electricity in advance even before the electricity bill arrives. It is similar to recharging our mobile network plans. The customers can recharge electricity for an amount as small as Rs 50.
Minister of New and Renewable Energy RK Singh had earlier said that the government is promoting smart and prepaid meters as a move to change the electricity ecosystem. To cope with the limited capacity of manufacturing smart meters and prepaid meters in India, it has floated global tenders.
