Energetica India Magazine December 2020

stand their energy use that can translate into energy and capital savings for the consumers. Today’s smart metering technology is rapidly evolving to cater to the ever growing need of the power segment, at the time smart metering technology can be effectively used to monitor water and piped cooking gas connections as well. For smart meters the emerging possibil- ities are immense and lot of technolog- ical innovation are being undertaken to make the smart meters more and more smarter. With the capacity to harness and process more and more data, smart meters are becoming more and more advanced and efficient. Cellular technology is rapidly advanc- ing and smart meters with 2G & 3G technologies are no longer capable of supporting the data speeds for modern communications. Latest technological research and innovation in smart me- tering technology are looking for solu- tions such as 4G and LTE, Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT) for new generation smart meters. These cellular technologies are significantly better and offer higher density, making better use of available spectrum and at offer faster speeds and high level of scalability. While there are tremendous advantages of smart meters, there are some poten- tial security challenges, such as ranging from privacy breach to state-sponsored cyber-attacks that need to taken into consideration while rapidly adopting smart meter technology. Enhanced se- curity protocols, advanced encryption and management Systems specifically designed for smart energy grid must be designed taking into consideration the cyber security challenges faced by In- dia. With the eagerness of the government to bring in reforms to the power sector, easily availability of resources, renewed thrust on ‘aatmanirbhar’ manufacturing, and urgency to revive ailing DISCOMS, makes the switch to advanced smart metering infrastructure more viable to- day and is absolutely the need of the hour. Smart metering is the quickly be- coming the new norm in the power and utility industry. Already traditional meter- ing system with manual data collection becoming obsolete and with further the advancement of IoT technology, it is only a matter of time to implement advanced smart metering infrastructure across the length and breadth of a country. POWER SECTOR 49 energetica INDIA- December_2020