Lanka Elec­tri­city Com­pany Lim­ited (LECO), was recently honored at the SLASSCOM National Ingenu­ity Awards 2026, for its project, “auto­ma­tion of elec­tri­city billing with smart meters.” The company was selec­ted as both the pro­vin­cial win­ner (West­ern Province) and the national win­ner under the Best Innov­at­ive Product in gov­ern­ment cat­egory.

Elec­tri­city billing in Sri Lanka depended heav­ily on manual processes for dec­ades. Meter read­ers vis­ited every cus­tomer monthly to record read­ings, and then data was manu­ally pro­cessed before bills were gen­er­ated and dis­trib­uted.

Manual meter read­ing required sig­ni­fic­ant human effort and time, res­ult­ing in delays in bill gen­er­a­tion, deliv­ery and rev­enue col­lec­tion. Human errors dur­ing meter read­ing or data entry reg­u­larly led to billing inac­curacies, cus­tomer dis­putes and addi­tional admin­is­trat­ive work. Phys­ical vis­its were neces­sary not only for meter read­ing but also for ser­vice dis­con­nec­tions and recon­nec­tions.

Fur­ther­more, util­it­ies had only lim­ited vis­ib­il­ity into cus­tomer con­sump­tion pat­terns and net­work per­form­ance, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to identify anom­alies, out­ages or energy losses promptly. Recognizing these chal­lenges, LECO embarked on an ambi­tious digital trans­form­a­tion program centered on smart meter tech­no­logy.

Recognizing these chal­lenges, LECO embarked on an ambi­tious digital trans­form­a­tion program centered on smart meter tech­no­logy. The imple­ment­a­tion of smart meter tech­no­logy has trans­formed the cus­tomer exper­i­ence in sev­eral ways, the company said. Cus­tom­ers now receive accur­ate bills based on actual con­sump­tion through con­veni­ent digital chan­nels, together with digital pay­ment options that make bill set­tle­ment faster and more con­veni­ent.

Additionally, remote ser­vice oper­a­tions have sig­ni­fic­antly improved cus­tomer con­veni­ence. Activ­it­ies such as dis­con­nec­tion and recon­nec­tion can now be com­pleted much faster, redu­cing wait­ing times and elim­in­at­ing many unne­ces­sary site vis­its.

The avail­ab­il­ity of near real-time con­sump­tion inform­a­tion also allows cus­tom­ers to bet­ter under­stand their elec­tri­city usage and make more informed decisions about energy con­sump­tion and in the case of grid-con­nec­ted solar cus­tom­ers, energy gen­er­a­tion as well.

This increased trans­par­ency has strengthened cus­tomer con­fid­ence while improv­ing the over­all qual­ity of pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery the company said.

The bene­fits of LECO’S digital trans­form­a­tion extend well bey­ond oper­a­tional improve­ments. The project dir­ectly sup­ports Sri Lanka’s broader national object­ives relat­ing to digital gov­ern­ment, oper­a­tional effi­ciency and envir­on­mental sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

By auto­mat­ing repet­it­ive manual activ­it­ies, LECO has sig­ni­fic­antly improved pro­ductiv­ity. Dur­ing the period from 2022 to 2026, the num­ber of con­sumers served per employee increased sub­stan­tially, demon­strat­ing meas­ur­able effi­ciency gains while improv­ing ser­vice qual­ity.

The project has also cre­ated sig­ni­fic­ant national eco­nomic value through the local man­u­fac­ture of smart meters under a joint ven­ture involving LECO. By redu­cing depend­ence on impor­ted equip­ment, the ini­ti­at­ive con­serves valu­able for­eign exchange, strengthens Sri Lanka’s indus­trial cap­ab­il­it­ies, pro­motes tech­no­logy trans­fer, and cre­ates skilled employ­ment oppor­tun­it­ies, con­trib­ut­ing to the coun­try’s long-term eco­nomic resi­li­ence, the company said.

LECO’s implementation of smart meter-based meter-to-bill auto­ma­tion makes it Sri Lanka’s first elec­tri­city util­ity to achieve 100% paper­less billing, sav­ing around 75 trees every month while redu­cing print­ing and dis­tri­bu­tion costs, according to the company.

In addi­tion, improved mon­it­or­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies have con­trib­uted to redu­cing non-tech­nical losses while accel­er­at­ing rev­enue col­lec­tion and strength­en­ing the fin­an­cial sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the util­ity.

Besides benefitting more than 185,000 smart meter cus­tom­ers, these improve­ments are also expected to help the national eco­nomy. The project dir­ectly sup­ports Sri Lanka’s broader national object­ives relat­ing to digital gov­ern­ment, oper­a­tional effi­ciency and envir­on­mental sus­tain­ab­il­ity, according to Lanka.

One of Sri Lanka’s largest IOT deploy­ments—the plat­form has been designed to scale seam­lessly to full cus­tomer cov­er­age through its cloud ready, stand­ards-based archi­tec­ture and open integ­ra­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies. It also provides the tech­no­lo­gical found­a­tion for enhancements such as pre­paid elec­tri­city, time-of-use tar­iffs, renew­able energy integ­ra­tion, elec­tric vehicle char­ging man­age­ment, and advanced energy ana­lyt­ics, LECO said.