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Energy and Power Development Minister Dzikamai Mavhaire and Zesa Holdings management are at loggerheads over whether to continue installing pre-paid meters on domestic premises or switch to smart meters. Minister Mavhaire said pre-paid meters being installed by the power utility had a defect, resulting in consumers using power for free. But Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company engineers said smart meters had “technical risks and are expensive”.
The alleged faulty pre-paid meters are being supplied by Solahart, ZTE, Finmark and Nyamazela of South Africa; who were contracted to supply 500 000 units.
Zim-Asset, Government’s economic blue print, has a pre-paid meter target base of 800 000 units. This means Zesa must buy another 300 000 meters during the first quarter of this year.
It is the 300 000 units to be installed by year end that Minister Mavhaire said should be smart meters.
“The pre-payment meter we have put in place has one defect, which is that one can circumvent the power and still continue to have power when the line does not pass through the pre-paid meter,” he told The Herald.
“It does not tell the centre that I am being circumvented. This has to be corrected and we are saying the following 300 000 meters have to be smart meters because you cannot do anything on them.”
Minister Mavhaire said the defect in pre-paid meters was benefiting consumers and costing Zesa.
“When you use a smart meter, it is little bit expensive, but it reports back at the centre any shortfall or meter bypassing taking place,” he said.
“They are benefiting the customer as they are getting power for nothing which is an offence. Instead of concentrating on generating and supplying power you end focusing on chasing those bypassing the meters. It is a fact that pre-paid meters are cheaper and we have served power with them but they do not meet our requirement and we are losing a lot in terms of revenue.”
The current pre-paid meters costs about US$100 each, while a smart meter cost about US$350.
Zesa Holdings engineers, in a document to be presented to the Energy and Power Development Ministry and seen by The Herald, says there are pertinent issues beyond functionality that should be taken into consideration before migrating to smart metering.
The engineers say there were differences between pre-paid meters and smart meters in terms of operational costs, technology risk, functionality, technical barriers and lead time.
This, the engineers say, was the reason why most countries were still in the testing phase for smart metering.
“In smart metering projects, the biggest risk is technology risk,” reads the document.
“Operability is one such key requirement which cannot be met at the moment. Smart metering projects have been rolled out mainly in the first world countries and direct comparisons cannot always be drawn due to the differing nature of socio-economic conditions and the varying policy and commercial drivers.”
The document says ZETDC has insufficient resources to implement and sustain a smart metering system.
It states that Zesa should instead tighten specifications for pre-paid meters to reduce tampering and revenue loses.
“ZETDC carried out a pilot project with Connect The World and ZTE with the objective of testing interoperability but none of the suppliers failed to prove interoperability.
“The required initial capital outlay is significant and unaffordable that is we need to buy meters, Mater Data Management and communication infrastructure.
“When we did our study to evaluate the proposal of having smart meters the cost for smart metering was US$450 million compared to pre-paid cost of US$62 million and we opted for pre-paid meters.”
The document adds that there are no current standards for smart meters and the power utility will be stuck with one supplier.
“Due to predominance of Western manufacturers in smart metering it will not be possible access friendly funding arrangements like we are getting from the East.
“Smart meters cannot be used as a means of load control because of the slow response time and low reliability of communication systems in the country.”
Online Reporter