About UPPCL
Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation limited (UPPCL) is the transmission and distribution utility in India’s largest state Uttar Pradesh through its five power distribution companies (Discoms), with more than 30 million consumers ( includes 23 million Billing/RMS data and Consumer data on UOC – Utility Operations Center ) having a connected load of 37,000 MW and energy sales of about 55,000 MU per year. The creation of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation limited (UPPCL) on January 14, 2000 was the result of power sector reforms and restructuring in UP (India), which is the focal point of the Power sector, responsible for planning and managing the sector through its transmission, distribution, and supply of electricity. The Government of Uttar Pradesh has formed MVVNL at Lucknow, PuVVNL at Varanasi, PVVNL at Meerut, DVVNL at Agra and KESCO at Kanpur as wholly-owned undertakings of the Government of Uttar Pradesh under the Companies Act, 1956 to undertake distribution and retail supply of power.
UP Discoms deliver highly reliable, good quality services with a focus on consumer satisfaction. These companies contribute to the sustainable economic development of the country while staying commercially viable.
Problem Statement
- Low revenue-realization due to incorrect billing and lack of collections
- The absence of a centralized billing system
- High capex involved in establishing DC/DR etc
- Increasing consumer complaints regarding thefts and pilferage
- A large number of unmetered consumer
- Delay in meter readings and delivery of bills
- High AT&C losses due to low billing and collection inefficiency
Objective
Create a sustainable impact by increasing Discoms’ revenue. Hence, some of the priority areas are increasing billing efficiency and enhancing customer satisfaction. The project also focuses on reducing daily operational challenges in rural area for consumers not covered under the Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP) by implementing a centralized billing and metering system in a cloud environment.
Benefits of implementing the solution:
- Increased billing and collection efficiency in rural areas
- Reduced AT&C losses owing to better grip on commercial losses
- Fast implementation, leading to quick results and benefits
- No capex, leading to a reduced burden on utility
- Centralization of data and implementation of a common billing system, leading to higher accuracy and efficiency
- More power to consumers by enabling self-service capabilities through web portals and mobile applications
- Better connectivity and communication between utility and consumers through SMS notifications
- More reliable and secured network owing to a cloud-based infrastructure
- Mobile spot billing app integrated with UOC and MWM to improve metering and billing efficiency and arrest revenue leakage.
- Easy and quick bill-generation through spot-billing
- Efficient revenue collection through a self-service mobile application, which includes both trust meter reading and billing
- Faster resolution of consumer complaints through a web-based customer portal and centralized helpdesk
Solution proposed by Fluentgrid:
Six to nine months Establishment of a centralized web-based billing solution deployed on the cloud, along with the following solutions:
- New service connection
- Disconnection
- Metering
- Billing
- Collection
- Energy audit
- Web self-service portal
- Mobile apps for self-service and mobile billing
- Business intelligence and reporting (MIS)
Analysis of consumer-wise billing information to identify sub-division-wise high, medium and low consumption consumers
Central monitoring in the form of dashboards through Utility Command Centre (UCC)
Other details:
- Considering the ease of any cloud deployment, the solution can be implemented without hassle in any utility
- Over 200 resources deployed (Both onsite and offshore) for successful and time–bound implementation of the project
- 100% opex with 0% capex from utilities, reducing their financial burden
- UPPCL won Cloud Migration of the Year Award (2018) – Data Centre Dynamics
- Fluentgrid CIS was piloted in two weeks flat as a proof-of-concept, before receiving a go-ahead for rolling it out to approx. 15+ Million consumers
- This among the largest cloud-hosted utility CIS/CRM deployments in the world on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
The cloud hosted billing and customer care solution for UP DISCOMs, implemented by Fluentgrid using its own CIS product suite, has now become a case study under the UDAY Scheme of Government of India. The case study published on the UDAY website (Read it here: https://www.uday.gov.in/cs/c1 ) details about how the cloud solution helped achieve 5.89% reduction in AT&C losses due to increased billing and collection efficiency.
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