K-Electric (KE) and the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) organized a joint session where the publicly owned DISCO’s were briefed about KE’s journey and experience as the first DISCO to implement Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) on an end to end scale. Inaugurating the event, Amer Zia, Chief Distribution Officer (CDO) KE said: “Recently KE has made significant in-roads towards automation at various front-end and back-end levels. AMI has been in the pipeline for over ten years. We are very appreciative of NEPRA and all the DISCO representatives for taking the time out to be here and learn from our experience.” While speaking at the joint session, Mazhar Iqbal Ranjha, Director – NEPRA said; “Energy companies across the globe are moving towards service automation. A move towards AMI can help introduce greater efficiencies while also providing a better user experience for our valued customers”. NEPRA is continuously emphasizing on real time monitoring and that such automated systems can be helpful in monitoring and enforcing regulatory instruments in their true letter and spirit. AMI system has smart meters as core devices. KE representatives briefed the attendees about the long-term advantages associated with moving towards AMI. This includes automated meter reading (first step towards auto billing), power quality monitoring and load management through the availability of timely and accurate information. AMI would also help to enable an improved customer experience. Current challenges connected with the implementation of AMI were also discussed, in particular national demographics. During the session, a brief overview of KE’s Geographical Information System (GIS) was also given to the attendees. The audience was told about KE GIS which enables the utility to capture and analyze geographical data to improve asset monitoring and management.
