Existing electricity meters can be made ‘smart’ by installing SIM cards, say TNPDCL officials

While the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Limited (TNPDCL) is planning to float tenders for installing smart meters in the city alone, instead of the earlier proposal of a Statewide rollout, a section of electricity officials says the existing digital meters for domestic consumers are good enough to play the role of a smart meter. The only thing they need is a connecting device such as a SIM card for automatic downloading of data by the assessors, the officials add.

The earlier government had planned to purchase and install smart meters throughout the State. However, owing to the high cost, the project was shelved. The new government led by the TVK had announced in the 2026-2027 Budget that smart meters would be installed for 50 lakh consumers, including domestic and commercial users, in Chennai alone, though it has not announced the amount sanctioned for the project.

An official of TNPDCL said the existing meters, called static meters, were good enough to be smart meters. Smart meters enable automatic disconnection and reconnection, whereas static meters can store the digital records for a year. By adding a SIM card, the static meters could be made ‘smart’, enabling the assessors to download the data of units consumed instead of having to manually record the consumed units, the official added.

Already, there had been a proposal for the downloading of electricity consumption data from the meters through bluetooth. But since a trade union had moved the court against the implementation of the project, it was dropped.

Consumer activist T. Sadagopan cited the example of digital printouts issued by the assessors of the Karnataka electricity board to domestic consumers in Bengaluru with no human intervention, as the data on energy consumed is automatically downloaded from static meters through handheld equipment. Instead of investing a huge amount of money on purchasing and installing smart meters in such large numbers, the TNPDCL could implement the project in a phased manner, he added.