CESC Advanced Metering Infrastructure & Smart Meter Pilot (Kolkata)
CESC, Kolkata's private power distributor (serving roughly 3.6 million consumers), partnered with Silver Spring Networks in December 2015 to deploy an IPv6/6LoWPAN wireless network for Advanced Metering Infrastructure and Distribution Automation, starting with a pilot of roughly 25,000 smart meters across two Kolkata localities — work that won the 2016 Asian Power "Smart Grid Project of the Year" award. A decade on, CESC's own technology disclosures describe the wider network more modestly: Automated Meter Reading (one-way remote reading, not full two-way smart metering) now covers all distribution transformers and large HT/LT bulk consumers, while true smart meters are described as deployed only "at strategic locations," not as a mass residential rollout — even as India's national RDSS programme has pushed other utilities toward tens of millions of prepaid smart meters.
🎓 Lesson
A pilot with a strong industry launch and a real award doesn't automatically become the mass rollout its early coverage implied — a decade later, the utility's own guarded language ('strategic locations') is the tell.
📖 Terms in this entry: Smart grid · Adaptive traffic signals · Digital twin
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “CESC Advanced Metering Infrastructure & Smart Meter Pilot (Kolkata)” — Kolkata, India. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/kolkata-cesc-ami-smart-metering/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.