TN power utility faces technical glitch for total automation of electricity bill

Chennai, June 17 (IANS) The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Company (Tangedco), a state government utility, has hit a technical glitch in the total automation of electricity bills.

A senior official with the Tangedco while speaking to IANS said that the power utility was to create an app to completely automate the power billing process. The app was to be rolled out much earlier, but it has hit a technical glitch leading to the government power provider approaching a private technical consultancy service to complete the process.

Sources in Tangedco told IANS that the technical glitch has taken place in integrating interoperable data exchange in non-Device Language Message Specification (DLMS) meters.

Tangedco had issued DLMS and non-DLMS metres to consumers of the state and around three crore metres were installed. While the DLMS metres can automatically share the data on billing cycle, power consumed, payment date, and payment history through the app that was created by Tangedco, non -DLMS metres, cannot provide these facilities.

The Tangedco officials said that while DLMS and non -DLMS metres are installed across the state of Tamil Nadu for the past two years the department failed to understand that the non- DLMS metres could be customised for mobile application use.

A senior officer with the power utility told IANS, "We installed both DLMS and non- DLMS metres across the state and there are around three crore such metres. However, non- DLMS metres are not app-friendly or have technical glitch. We did not anticipate such a bottleneck as a project like this was not in place when the installation of DLMS and non- DLMS metres commenced. We will now have to correct the technical glitches associated while linking the non- DLMS metres and the app."

The official also said that with the support of the private consultancy service the power utility is expecting to overcome the technical issues and to bring out a newer version of the app by the end of December 2022.