NEW DELHI: Tata Power Delhi Distribution (Tata Power-DDL), which supplies electricity to north Delhi, has launched Narrow Band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) for smart meters installed in its service area.
NB-IoT is a low-power, wide-area network radio technology standard developed by 3GPP, a standards organisation, to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services.
Smart meters require a two-way communication network, control centre equipment, and software applications for near real-time gathering and transfer of energy usage information.
“After successfully installing 2.3 Lakh smart meters on RF (radio frequency) technology, Tata Power Delhi Distribution (Tata Power-DDL), a leading power distribution company serving a populace of 7 million in North Delhi, has launched a unique Narrow Band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology in Smart Meters. This is the first installation of its kind in the country where smart meters have been installed on NB-IoT,” the electricity distribution company said in a statement on Thursday.
This comes in the backdrop of world’s largest electricity smart metering programme underway in India, aimed at cutting distribution losses. India’s smart meter programme aims to replace 250 million conventional meters to help raise annual revenues of debt-laden electricity distribution companies (discoms) to ₹1.38 trillion.
“The technology integration has been done involving meter manufacturers and NB-IoT service of Reliance-Jio Network,” the statement added.
Mint earlier reported about Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) eyeing the smart electricity meter market and plans to leverage its Jio business to offer meter data collection, communication cards, telecom and cloud hosting services to discoms.
“NB-IoT is a new and cost-effective technology in 4G and 5G spectrum with fast deployment quality. With this technology, the interference and obstruction arising due to public network congestion will not hamper the performance of smart meter anymore as data will smoothly flow through a dedicated channel. It will also enable more number of remote meter readings possible thereby ensuring the safety of the consumers during pandemic times,” the statement said.
Jio Platforms Ltd, RIL’s digital solutions subsidiary, has built significant capabilities in areas such as cloud and edge computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain, and internet of things (IoT).
“The interoperability has also been achieved at Meter Data Management level whereby meters from multiple makes and different technologies are collected, worked upon and analysed at the same platform,” the statement said.
