DLMS COSEM adoption in India, has been a hotly debated subject for many years. After the CPRI organized National Conference on Metering Protocols and DLMS and setup the DLMS/COSEM 3rd Party Certification Laboratory, the adoption of DLMS / COSEM has been gaining momentum. Today DLMS COSEM has many supporters and the major Indian meter manufacturer's have implemented DLMS/COSEM for their export requirements. In the 12 months DLMS COSEM and standardization in protocols have got more impetus with many utilities facing problems in implementing AMR / AMI solution using proprietary protocols. A recent report by Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai to Distribution Company of the state of Maharashtra has recommended the adoption of DLMS COSEM in MSEDCL projects.
IEEMA, the Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturer's Association has been at the forefront of opposing the adoption of DLMS COSEM in India and proposed an alternate protocol standard called MIOS (Meter Interoperability Standard). They have till date only one implementation of their standard in India and that too has many issues. Indian Standard's Body, the BIS (Beaureau of Indian Standards) has an ongoing effort at standardizing DLMS/COSEM as well as MIOS, however the progress has been delayed due to meter manufacturer opposition to DLMS.
Considering the difficulties faced by the utilities to have successful remote metering deployments, and the heavy loss of more than 30% of AT&C (Aggregate technical and commercial) losses in Indian Power Distribution Sector and the non-viability of additional government subsidies to make these utilities viable, the Central government has been forced to think broadly for a solution. The CEA, the Central Electricity Authority, started a process of consultation and arrive at a consensus to implement a standard protocol in India. The CEA started the process in February 2008 to discuss this issue. There were different view point's raised, for and against DLMS/COSEM and MIOS. Mr. Murugesan (formerly of CPRI) presented the advantages of DLMS / COSEM and Kalkitech and CPRI and several utilities stressed the need for a standard open protocols, adoption of DLMS in India as a national standard. However this meeting also did not proceed further, and the recommendation and action items at this meeting were not acted upon seriously.
The Indian Government announced the APDRP-II, the accelerated power development and reform program that intends to fund Indian Distribution Sector with upwards of 10 Billion dollar's for Distribution Modernisation in the next 5 years. The central government felt that without the remote metering protocol issue was sorted and settled it was not possible to make this program successful. Hence the Government once again instructed the CEA and an empowered committee to make recommendation to the Government on adoption of an open and standard protocol within a fixed time frame. This committee in it's final report last month is being reported to have recommended DLMS/COSEM as the protocol to be followed for all new metering in India under the APDRP-II program, and essentially all other programs. The committee also is known to have recommended that existing installations may go for a replacement of meters or use protocol converter's to meet the requirement of a common protocol and that the BIS be entrusted with the task of adopting DLMS/COSEM as an Indian standard. CPRI, CEA and BIS will play an active role in defining India specific OBIS or tamper specifications.
With these developments, we believe the standardization discussion is reaching it's final shape. The true shape it will take will be known when the DLMS/COSEM project's for remote metering are rolled out and becomes successful. Also, the specific requirement for reporting, billing and tamper in the Indian context needs to be addressed. We do hope that once we bury our hatchet on which protocol is good for India, all the stakeholders including government, Meter Manufacturer's, System Integrators, Utilities, Standardization Bodies and regulators will work together in addressing the issues of making appropriate modifications as is required to meet the unique tampering and energy trading requirements of ABT in India. Also, we believe the investment in AMR/AMI infrastructure brought out by APDRP-II will result in more of the tampering issues shifting from meter to the IT domain, with advanced software to track usage and detect tampering in real-time and the protocol standardization concerns will revolve more on security, reading effectiveness, cost's, maintenance, deployment efficiency, last-mile reading, adoption for residential applications etc.,
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