Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) has issued a request for proposal (RfP) to install 13,700 smart water meters in the city households. The bid-submission deadline is January 25, 2019.

The scope of work includes the design, supply, installation, and commissioning of the smart water meters in Chandigarh. The scope of work also includes carrying out confirmatory survey of consumers as well as a preliminary activity of network survey and its digitization in the implementation area.

The successful bidder will also be responsible for 15 years of operation and maintenance of the smart water meters. The successful bidder will have to submit a fortnightly progress report (FPR) of smart water meters supplied and installed to the city. The progress report will include details of the consumer connection where a smart meter has been installed, including the date of installation.

The successful bidder will also need to provide a guarantee against all manufacturing defects for the supplied and installed equipment. If the meter is found stolen, it will not be covered under the guarantee of the installer.

Smart meters are the need of the hour in India, considering the dire need for energy efficient devices and lately, there have been a bouquet of proposals to install smart meters in various Smart Cities which are undergoing an infrastructure renovation. The NDA government’s Smart Cities Mission aims at urban renewal with the mission to develop 100 cities across the country that are energy efficient, citizen friendly, and sustainable.

For instance, in the first week of 2019, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) issued a tender for the installation of smart meters for its Faridabad township.

Recently, the Indore Smart City Development Limited also issued a tender for smart meters to be installed under Indore Smart City project. For this, 30,000 smart meters with RF mesh communication will be installed.

In November 2018, the Uttar Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission approved a petition filed by Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd. regarding the rollout of smart meters in the state. About 4 million consumers across five distribution companies in Uttar Pradesh will benefit from this initiative.

Recently, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) successfully completed the pilot phase of its satellite-based smart meter project in a village in Varanasi in which 5,000 households received the meters.