10-1 DLMS in India
The Indian Companion Specification for adoption of IEC62056 metering specifications is now at near completion stage. The mandatory Wide-Circulation of the final draft (arrived at at the end of a number of Panel meetings) to the entire sectional committee is done and final comments after Wide Circulation are being collected and compiled for discussion in the proposed 20th meeting of the Sectional Committee ET13, Bureau of Indian Standards. The said meeting is now expected to be scheduled in February and should pave the way for publication of the Companion Specification.
In its current form, the companion specification basically identifies the basic list of meter objects for three categories of meters, namely Energy accounting and Audit meters, Boundary and Interface Meters, Consumer Meters. The lists of meter objects are identified explicitly with interface classes, access rights under three mandatory associations and data types clearly defined. the security aspects of the metering protocol implementaiton are divided into a choice of two security profiles, a basic profile that only relies on authentication methods and an advanced profile that includes data communication phase security. The advanced security profile is not mandated currently in the specification since the necessary clauses were not available in IEC 62056 specifications at the time. The companion specification also addresses protocol specific features, specifying values for options where the base standards offer more than one choice.
On the implementation front, the Power Finance Corporation (PFC), the nodal agency for the implementaiton of the Restructured APDRP program in India, has proceeded to issue tenders for new projects stating the requirement for DLMS/COSEM Meters as per the companion specification draft. All new implementations including 3-phase Industrial meters are mandated to be DLMS/COSEM meters.