Adani arm bags Rs 1,300 cr smart meters installation deal from Mumbai’s BEST

Adani Transmission on Thursday announced that it has bagged a deal to instal and maintain 10.80 lakh smart meters for BEST Undertaking.

Sources pegged the deal value for the multi-year-old engagement by Adani Transmission’s distribution platform at Rs 1,300 crore. The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking is a state-run utility that serves consumers in the island city exclusively.

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Adani Transmission’s subsidiary Adani Electricity Mumbai distributes power in the suburbs, where it competes with Tata Power. The company has also gone public with its ambitions to expand to other pockets in the state and capitalise on a liberalised policy once it is implemented. The current contract involves installing the smart meters over a 30-month period and maintaining them for the following 90 months, as per a statement.

The smart metering project, undertaken on a Design-Build-Finance-Own-Operate-Transfer (DBFOOT) basis also involves setting up of communication and other cloud-related infrastructure, it added. The meters will help consumers monitor online consumption patterns and take prompt corrective action whenever necessary, it said, adding that they also provide an option to opt for pre-paid billing and net-metering facility for housing societies and commercial buildings with the roof-top solar facility.

BEST will also have the ability to carry out remote connection and disconnection of non-paying customers, while the regulator will benefit as it will enable to design of consumer-friendly Time of Day Tariffs. Adani Transmission’s distribution chief executive Kandarp Patel said this is a first for the company and an “accretive” one. “We are confident to deliver this project as per expectations within a timely manner, allowing BEST Undertaking and its consumers to fully capitalise on the potential of digitalisation,” he added. The Adani Transmission scrip was trading 2.06 per cent up at Rs 3,204.90 apiece on the BSE at 1108 hrs against a 0.18 per cent correction on the benchmark.