India Smart Utility Week Smart Metering & AMI 2026

At ISUW 2026, Kimbal took centre stage in one of India’s most critical conversations on grid intelligence. Santadyuti Samanta, our Head of Product and Solution Management, spoke at the Conference Session on “Smart Metering and Smart Meter Data Analytics” held at New Delhi — joining peers who are actively shaping where India’s energy infrastructure is headed.

A session built around what’s actually hard

The panel on AMI 2.0: Grid Intelligence, DER Integration & Cyber-Resilient Architecture, went beyond technology to address something more fundamental: whether India’s regulatory frameworks and institutions are actually ready for the grid of the future.

One of the biggest challenges discussed was interoperability — something the sector continues to grapple with. As distributed energy resources grow and EV adoption accelerates, the grid is becoming more dynamic and complex. This makes seamless communication between systems, devices, and platforms not just important, but essential. The panel highlighted that achieving this goes beyond technical standards. It requires coordinated policies, aligned institutions, and regulatory frameworks that evolve alongside technology.

The future of India’s grid is clearly intelligent and interconnected. The real question is whether the regulatory and institutional foundations can keep pace with that transformation.

Intelligence at the edge — and what it demands

Another key theme that emerged during the discussion was distributed intelligence — and why the future grid can no longer rely solely on centralised decision-making.

With millions of smart meters, distributed energy resources, and EV charging points generating data at the edge, the grid is becoming far more dynamic. This means decisions often need to be made closer to where the data is generated — enabling faster, local responses instead of waiting for central commands.

But enabling this shift isn’t just about deploying smarter hardware. It requires rethinking how data flows across the grid, how decisions are authorised, and how cybersecurity is managed across an increasingly complex and distributed system.

At the heart of it all, the conversation kept returning to one important point, ‘the consumer’. A smarter grid only truly delivers value when it improves everyday experiences: more reliable power, quicker response times, and greater transparency.

Moving from utility-centric operations to a genuinely consumer-centric distribution ecosystem isn’t just a technical evolution, it’s also a cultural shift. And that shift will play a defining role in shaping the grid of the future.

Where Kimbal fits in

At Kimbal, products and solutions are built around making AMI data truly actionable, helping utilities gain the visibility and tools they need to manage growing grid complexity in real time. Kimbal’s participation at ISUW wasn’t just about being part of the conversation, but about contributing practical insights from the field — grounded in the realities utilities face as they navigate this transition.

We’re grateful to the India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) and ISUW for bringing together stakeholders to discuss these critical issues. Conversations around interoperability, DER and EV integration, distributed intelligence, and grid cyber-resilience aren’t just technical themes — they are the priorities that will shape India’s energy transition in the years ahead.

Want to learn more about AMI 2.0, read here.