Cost Benefit Analysis of Smart Grid: A Case Study from India

Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) is an important financial analytical tool which gives an insight to the viability and feasibility of a project. With the growing prominence of the smart grids, various smart grid pilot projects are supported by the Ministry of Power, India. These projects should be evaluated by performing the CBA. The profitability indicators used to evaluate a project is the Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Benefits to Cost Ratio (B/C) and the Payback Period (PB). Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is the backbone of the smart grid and is the largest cost component of the total cost. This paper focuses on the deployment of AMI for two scenarios. In scenario A, smart meters are deployed for all the customers on 1000 feeders and in scenario B, only the customers whose monthly consumption is greater than 200 units are considered for the deployment. This is an extended case study of the India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF). The pecuniary value of the costs and the benefits are considered by consulting various utilities. Only the monetary values of the benefits and the costs are obtained from the base case. In this paper three sub-cases are created in each scenario by choosing different percentages of the loan being taken to check the worst-case feasibility of the project. CBA is performed for both the scenarios. Subsequently, financial analyses done for both the cases are reported and discussed. The results identify the threshold values of loan. The sensitivity analysis show that project is viable and profitable up to reduction of benefit by 20% with no changes in the cost.