Project BEST Implemented
The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board has completed implementation of Project BEST (Billing of Energy Services by TNEB) in this region, which covers Coimbatore and the Nilgiris districts and Dharapuram. According to an official of the board here, the second phase of the project has covered the non-urban areas, benefiting about 9.5 lakh consumers. With this, even the remote areas in this region have been brought under the programme. Project BEST covers Low Tension billing, collection and accounting. In areas where computerisation has been completed, the assessor enters the reading in a portable hand held device on the consumer’s premises.The device will compute the amount and this will be entered in the meter card provided to the consumer. Each such device can accommodate data relating to about 10,000 service connections. When the device is connected to the local server at the section office, the data is uploaded to the local server and the main server. Implementation started about two years ago and in the first phase, an investment of Rs. 5.55 crore was made in the urban areas covering corporations and municipalities in Coimbatore and the Nilgiris districts and a municipality in the Erode district. It benefited over six lakh consumers.
