From Jammu to Hyderabad (even in Pakistan!), from Mumbai to Kolkata, India is experimenting with prepaid electricity to tackle a host of problems ranging from unpaid bills to incorrect bills and illegal consumption. As the Indian Express reported yesterday, Imphal appears set to become the latest to climb aboard this bandwagon. Generating just 40 MW of electricity while demanding around 140 MW (with the gap filled by supply from neighbouring states like Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura), Manipur hopes that prepaid cards will help it control power theft and offer a more reliable supply to paying customers. The question is whether this is a viable plan. Well, the developed world offers many examples of smart meters being used to cut consumption and increase efficiency. In the developing world, its the mobile metaphor that?s cited from Brazil to South Africa and Indonesia. As consumers here leapfrogged over fixed-line expansions to reach for mobile phones, so any of a host of energy technologies in play today could leapfrog the fifth of the world?s population that lives without electricity today into light. Meanwhile, prepaid electricity would eliminate billing delay, streamline administration costs, enable low-income customers to save money through a controlled use of energy, and improve electricity supply for everyone who pays for it. Two examples of such possibilities are Delhi and Andhra Pradesh. In the former case, it has been reported that smart meters attached to the premises of the largest consumers helped slash electric losses from 53% to 15% within seven years.
But smart meters have to be part of a broader strategy. In Andhra, an unbundling of the state utility, a dramatic reduction in transmission plus distribution losses, a regularisation of millions of unauthorised connections took place in the same breath as the passing of a law recognising collusion by utility staff as a criminal offence and constitution of special courts for speedy trial of electricity theft.
