Siemens Ltd has announced that the Infrastructure & Cities Sector has won an order worth around Rs 130 crore from the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd. (MSEDCL) to modernise its electricity distribution management system. Apart from improving reliability of the distribution network and minimizing distribution losses, the solution is a major step forward towards Smart Grid.

Siemens will manage the entire project in addition to the development, manufacture, implementation and commissioning of SCADA/DMS supervisory control centres for eight cities under the Restructured Accelerated Power Development Reforms Program (R-APDRP) of Government of India. The project is scheduled to be commissioned by June 2013. The eight cities are: Greater Mumbai, Pune, Nasik, Amravati, Malegaon, Sangli, Solapur and Kolhapur.

Dr Armin Bruck, Managing Director, Siemens Ltd. said, "A vast majority of people in India have limited access to reliable power and the nation needs sustainable solutions to solve its power deficiency. With India's visionary R-APDRP program, the Government has laid the foundation for the future and it's now the turn of state power distribution companies to leverage on it."

Tilak Raj Seth, Sector Cluster Lead - Infrastructure & Cities, South Asia, said, "The solution enables customers to monitor their network on a real-time basis, perform necessary analyses and take remedial actions to reconfigure the network to make the power distribution reliable and efficient. The system will also help in giving quality service to consumers."

The Ministry of Power had launched the R-APDRP programme in the 11th Five-year plan. The programme includes data acquisition at distribution level, monitoring the success of the IT backbone and strengthening the Electricity Distribution system across India. One of the objectives of the R-APDRP programme is to reduce AT&C losses to 15% in project areas.