The regime of prepaid meters for electricity consumers is spreading across emerging economies in Africa with Ghana leading in West Africa.
Business Hilights Ghana Bureau chief reports that the Eastern Regional branch of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has spent Gh¢5,502,500 on the acquisition of over 4,000 prepaid meters for installation at Kyebi in the Eastern Region.
Whereas the prepaid meters have been allocated to replace existing post-paid ones in the community, the three-month project, which started in January this year, is expected to be completed in March.
Here in Nigeria, though the federal government having observed that electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) are not willing to meter consumers introduced Meter Access providers (MAPs) to partner Discos in seamless delivery of prepaid meters.
However, feelers from MAP operators show that Discos are buying time and playing delay games to continue to rip off majority of Nigerian power consumers who cannot protest crazy bills powered by estimated billing regime.
Still in Ghana, Mr Yusif Adamu, the MBH Metering System Project Engineer, who spoke to the consumers on the prepaid meters averred that the uniqueness of the MBH meters lied in the use of the keypad operator rather than the card, which requires customers to swipe or insert to load credits.
While explained that the meters are linked to a separate User Interface Unit (UIU), which can be used by customers to manually operate the meter, he noted that “Customers do not have to go to their meters to monitor their units because the UIU is installed at an accessible location in the customers’ premises for easy monitoring.”
Besides, the meters were GPRS compliant, which enabled purchases to be remotely credited to the meter from the point of sale.
The meters also come with special features to detect illegal connection and disconnect customers from supply and have the ability to record customer consumption.
