Cyan, the integrated system and software design company delivering mesh based flexible wireless solutions for utility metering and lighting control, announces that a consortium led by Larsen & Toubro (“L&T”) has been selected by Tata Power Mumbai for the deployment of Cyan’s CyLec® Advanced Metering Infrastructure (“AMI”) solution in India.
Tata Power Mumbai (“Tata”) is a Tata Group company and part of India’s largest integrated power company with a significant international presence and approximately 400,000 retail customers in Mumbai. Tata have spent the last 12 months evaluating the consortium’s technology and following the success of this evaluation, Cyan has now received an order from L&T to provide a complete AMI solution consisting of 865MHz RF modules, Data Concentrator Units, Head-End Server software licenses, onsite software installation services and an annual software maintenance contract. The Cyan 865MHz radio communication modules will be installed inside the L&T smart meters that will be deployed for Tata. The initial contract with Tata is for the deployment of 5,000 consumer meters in a district in Mumbai and is currently planned to go live in early 2015.
The consortium members include L&T (consortium lead partner), Cyan and Neosilica, who in partnership will provide an integrated CyLec AMI solution to Tata. L&T will supply smart meters, with CyLec® wireless technology inside, and Neosilica will provide a Meter Data Acquisition System (“MDAS”) interface from Cyan’s Head End Server into Tata’s Meter Data Management System for billing and fault management.
John Cronin, Executive Chairman of Cyan, commented,
“After the announcement of the first retrofit order from Essel Utilities less than two weeks ago, we are delighted to confirm our second significant order and commercial deployment in India. Since signing a partnership agreement with L&T in February 2012, we have worked closely with them to ensure we can provide a fully functional end-to-end solution for the Indian market. As Tata are viewed as leaders in the generation and transmission of electricity, their selection of the consortium’s AMI technology will act as an important reference for other utilities evaluating smart metering technologies across India. This selection demonstrates the strength and credibility of the consortium’s offering and further establishes Cyan as a credible solution for emerging markets.”
Reji Pillai Kumar, President of India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF), commented
“I wish to congratulate ISGF members Tata Power Company, L&T and Cyan Technology on the commercial deployment of full AMI solutions on sub-GHz RF mesh network in India. Utilities have recognised the benefits that can be achieved by adopting smart grid technologies and an important step towards reducing T&D losses is to remotely identify and collect data from every meter. I am pleased that Tata Power is progressing to commercial deployment of the CyLec AMI platform which would support Tata Power’s billing and fault management processes and provide the full benefits of these advanced technologies.”
Satyam Bheemarasetti of Neosilica, CEO, commented,
“We are pleased to be part of the consortium selected to provide enterprise-level scalable solutions in smart grid AMI that will deliver tangible savings to Tata Power. We appreciate Tata Power and L&T for taking this crucial first step towards commercial adoption of smart grid in India.”
The Indian power sector is heavily focussed on reducing transmission and distribution (“T&D”) losses which will support the distribution companies’ requirement to improve their financial health. Smart grid technologies have been identified as a solution that could address these losses effectively. By implementing a smart metering solution, it allows the utility to collect and analyse data from every meter ensuring accurate billing and collection for every customer. As revenues increase, and T&D losses decrease, monies can be reinvested into further smart grid roll outs. With 200 million meters currently, it is estimated that India will install 130 million smart meters by 2021.
