Reliance Industries is looking to enter the smart electricity meter business with its Internet of Things research and infrastructure against the backdrop of the world’s largest smart electricity program under way in the country. Under the plan, India aims to replace 250 million conventional electricity meters with smart electricity meters.
The country’s largest business conglomerate, which has interests in energy, petrochemicals, retail, textiles, natural resources and telecommunications, is eyeing the smart electricity meters market by leveraging its Jio Platforms to collect meter data and offer telecom and cloud hosting services to power generation and distribution companies in the country.
Reliance Industries is eager to expand its footprint in India as well as globally. The firm has been on a roll and has announced a series of foreign investments even in a pandemic-struck market.
The recent investments in Reliance Industries signal an emerging market trend of investors seeking safer companies to put their money in amid a global outbreak. The investors are unlikely to place their bets on smaller and vulnerable business houses which are more likely to fall victim to a pandemic-hit and uncertain economy. Reliance Industries has, therefore, emerged as the clear choice for investors, benefiting from advanced technological and innovative solutions which have been well recognized across the country.
The company seems unstoppable and the decision to enter the advanced metering infrastructure business only shows its willingness to take on new challenges and remain the market leader in Indian business.
The business giant plans to introduce smart meters in the power generation and distribution industry by introducing Narrow-band Internet of Things-based advanced electricity meters that offer a two-way communication network, control centre equipment, and software applications to facilitate the real-time measurement of power consumption and relay the information to the distribution centre.
Jio Platforms, which is known for revolutionizing the telecommunication market by introducing low-cost 4G data plans, has the necessary innovations in cloud and edge computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain and internet of things in its inventory to bring about transformation in the power distribution sector with advanced metering infrastructure.
The replacement of conventional electric meters with smart measurement meters is crucial to the Reforms Linked Result Based Scheme for Distribution – a Rs 3.5 trillion distribution reform scheme initiated by the Central government which is aimed at cutting distribution losses.
The conventional meters are outdated and cause unwanted loss in revenue generation for electricity distribution companies. Replacing them with smart electricity meters will decrease instances of theft and transform the collection and billing system for discoms.
This is necessary to make up for the debt that has crushed the backbone of these companies and increase their revenue to Rs 1.38 trillion every year. Along with increasing the revenue for the companies, the smart meters will also decrease human intervention in the data collection method. This not only increases accuracy but achieves the common objective of all industries to introduce technologies that increase social distancing and decrease human interaction wherever possible.
Comment here