Prospects Of Smart Metering System In Bangladesh: Cost Benefit Analysis
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Date
2021-09
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Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Abstract
One of the most significant parts of smart grids is Smart Metering System. They felicitate
the information exchange between the service providers and the consumers, resulting in
efficient management in the electricity supply.
Implementation of Smart Meter system is only possible if the people, government and the
investors are highly interested to implement this technology. Many Western countries like
Great Britain (GB) and Canada have conducted Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) before starting
installation of Smart Meters. The aim of this study is to compare the benefits of Smart
Metering system against the traditional (electro-mechanical and pre-paid) meters on the
basis of its Cost Benefit Analysis. So the main focus is to put emphasis on the cost benefit
analysis and probability of this thesis work in this field of digitalizing the meter system
across the country. The most important fact to analyze before the installation of Smart Meters
is to find out the advantages of such technology as well as the cost behind the setup of such
meter. For example, the installation and maintenance expenses, financial savings from the
Time-of-Use (ToU) etc.
Bangladesh is still relying on the prepaid meters whereas the modern world is trying to
implement a smarter technology rather than prepaid meters. The question that comes from
mind is that whether installing Smart Meter in our region is affordable or not. The
establishment cost of installing mart meter may be high but in general, the roll-out offers a
1.36 benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR), which reflects the costs and benefits of lifetime. In order
to investigate this study, Chittagong Municipality Area was chosen to find out the total
consumers of this region and how can the prepaid meters be replaced with the Smart Meters
within an approximate minimal expense. From the very beginning of installing the Smart
Metering System the required costs were being calculated approximately which includes
operational cost, maintenance cost, meter cost, In-home display cost, Data Communications
Company (DCC) cost etc. The total cost of this project is set to be nearly $300.9M. The
energy savings and power consumption cost are also discussed in the later part.
Description
submitted by Md. Mohibul Hassan, bearing Matric ID. ET163002 and
Mahmudul Alam, bearing Matric ID. ET163019 of session Spring 2021
Keywords
Smart Meter, Cost Benefit Analysis, Time-of-Use, Energy Saving, Implementation