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UPPCL asked to submit report on fast running of smart meters in 7 days
UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) on Tuesday shot off a letter to UPPCL managing director in this regard
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The electricity regulator has directed the UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) to submit a detailed report on the fresh complaints about the hi-tech smart meters a number of which have been found running fast in some cities under the Lucknow discom.
UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) on Tuesday shot off a letter to the UPPCL managing director in this regard, asking him to submit the report within seven days so that the commission could take an early decision in the larger interest of consumers.
The commission acted after UP Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad chairman Avdhesh Kumar Verma on Tuesday made a written complaint to it. In the complaint, he said not only had the UPPCL resumed installation of 4-G smart meters after two years without the Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) addressing to the quality concerns but many of the smart meters had also been found malfunctioning in a fresh test.
As per the Lucknow discom’s test report, of the 1911 smart meters tested recently in Lucknow, Barabanki and Bareilly, 84 were found running fast while six were slow.
“The rules allow blacklisting of a company if more than 1.5% of the meters supplied by it are found defective. In this case, the per centage is as high as 4.7%,” he said and demanded the blacklisting of EESL that supplied the meters.
The fresh controversy has erupted as the UPPCL has resumed the work to install 50 lakh smart meters across the state in the months to come. The work was restarted after two years when thousands of smart meters malfunctioned and got disconnected automatically leaving consumers in many cities without power for hours.
Though the corporation has resumed the work with KESCO, it is still to get reply from the EESL on functional problems reported in some meters.
In a letter to the director, ESSL, on June 26, UPPCL director (commercial), Amit Kumar Srivastav said some functional problems had been detected in the BSI-certified meters during their lifecycle. He further said the EESL was conducting a stress test to rule out such possibilities.
In a reminder letter to the ESSL on August 18, Srivastav said, “We had requested the EESL to make the stress report available to us but the desired action is still awaited.” The UPERC too took the note of this in its letter sent to the UPPCL on Tuesday.
