The power industry in South Asia is on the cusp of a transformation driven by technological advances, decreasing energy intensity, heightened environmental awareness, and evolving customer expectations. Governments in most South Asian countries are helping utilities by implementing various schemes to improve their power sectors. In particular, the widespread and successful adoption of smart metering in advanced economies over the last decade has encouraged South Asian policy makers to take an increasing interest in smart metering systems in hope that they can address some of the chronic issues. Now, with high-level policies in place and utilities keen to adopt smart metering, funding requirement and implementation challenges remain the bottlenecks to mass deployment. A recent World Bank-funded study for South Asian Utilities, carried out in 2018, developed guidance, based on user experience, on the deployment and operation of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and analytics systems by electricity distribution utilities in India and other South Asian countries. The guidance is intended for the ready reference of policy makers and utility managers. This report has two main parts as follows:
- Chapter 1 provides an overview of the use of data analytics by power utilities, including conceptual architecture for system deployment, meter data flow in metering, billing and collection (MBC) processes, and data analytics systems
and
- Chapter 2 describes the transition phase utilities go through while adopting data analytics systems, including an explanation of procurement and implementation models for data analytics systems.