ESMI was developed as an independent mechanism to monitor the supply quality and hold electric utilities accountable for their performance. ESMI was aimed at providing evidence-based feedback about the quality of supply to all stakeholders in the electricity sector, including distribution companies, regulatory commissions, government agencies, civil society organisations, and consumer groups. We hope that this will lead to improvement in the quality of supply and fairness in distribution of electricity in India.
ESMI has developed a reliable database on supply interruptions and voltage levels at consumer locations in India with hundreds of Electricity Supply Monitors (ESM) installed in households, farms, and small commercial establishments all over India. The ESM was a plug-in device that integrated a voltage recorder and a data-logger that could be easily installed at any remote location without the services of an electrician. The ESM recorded voltage by the minute at its location and sent the data to a central server using GPRS, which is made available on this website.
Consumers, civil society organizations, researchers, regulatory commissions and other concerned actors are encouraged to use this data to increase accountability of electric utilities. Electricity supply quality can be compared to the standards of performance prescribed by regulatory commissions. The utilities’ capital expenditure on improvement in supply quality can be scrutinized by verifying whether the supply quality has actually improved. The supply quality in different regions can be compared to underscore biases, if any, in supply interruptions and quality.
"Electricity Supply Monitoring Initiative (ESMI) was selected as a finalist for the Google Impact Challenge, India, 2013 given to NGOs using technology for social impact." After running the initiative for nearly a decade we have discontinued the monitoring due to challenges of maintaining and updating the software and ESM devices, changing regulatory requirements and mobile technology Cooperation from ESM host has been a major support for the initiative and we sincerely thank all ESM hosts.
