South Korean telco KT has built a national data centre to manage and control remotely electricity services for Uzbekistan’s eight million utility users.

KT was tasked with building a national integrated data centre and a centralised smart meter managing and remote controlling platform to manage power consumption and billing. The centre can process information from eight million smart meters in real time. Installation of the smart meters is targeted for completion next year in 14 administrative divisions.

“KT’s Uzbekistan project is part of the global business expansion of its AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) energy platform and latest AI and big data-based technologies,” said Park Yoon-Young, president of KT’s enterprise business group. “Following its success in Uzbekistan, KT plans to expand its smart energy business to other nations across central Asia.”

In Uzbekistan, manual reading and control by visiting each household has caused delays and inaccuracy. It also resulted in a difficulty to forecast the consumption of electricity in real time and prevent blackouts.

“With the centralised AMI data centre, we are now able to analyse electricity usage and adopt a variety of pricing policy by systematically handling the process from generation to consumption,” said former first deputy prime minister for ICT development Umarov Olimdjon Muhamadjanovich at the opening ceremony. “We are grateful for assistance from KT, which has successfully carried out our new national energy management project.”

Also at the opening ceremony in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, were Sultanov Alisher Saidabbasovich, minister of energy, Lee Han-Sup, KT’s senior vice president, and representatives of regional electrical power networks (REPNs) and energy enterprises.

The national electricity data centre will help state-run REPNs monitor power usage of eight million customers, improve the efficiency of transmitting power, control electricity supply to customers’ payment status, and take swift action for the line loss on the spot.

Artificial intelligence-based analyses of big data from smart meters, amassed from the KT platform, will introduce time-of-use pricing, a measure designed to disperse on-peak demand to off-peak hours. Users will also be able to monitor their power consumption and billing at an online site in real time.

“The digital data storage process has enabled us to control electricity trading and usage, and to design a wide range of pricing policy,” said Saidabbasovich. “We have been deeply impressed by the professionalism KT has demonstrated in carrying out this project.”

Ulugbek Mustaev, chairman the board of REPNs, added: “In strategic partnership with KT, a top Korean business enterprise, we have successfully built a centralised AMI data centre. We look forward to more energy business relationships with KT in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other CIS countries.”