ZESCO Smart meters to ‘sort’ out customers
ZESCO will soon start replacing the current conventional prepaid metres with smart ones which will enable the company to directly switch off electrical appliances for customers misusing power from the system.
The five year US$40 million project has already been piloted in the last two year with positive results.
With the smart meters, we will be able to deal with a customer’s response ourselves as Zesco, says Company Managing Director, Victor Mundende.
“What we meant is that we will be able to, if we have less power giving to an area, we will be able to switch off other appliances that you have like geysers without the customer intervention.
“From the comfort of our offices, we will be able to deal with certain appliances in order to share the little power that we have,” Mr Mundende said yesterday in Lusaka at a press briefing.
Mr Mundende indicated that this move was meant to control customer response and ensure that electricity was shared equally.
He said Zesco was currently awaiting a no objection from the Zambia Public Procurement Authority regarding the project.
Mr Mundende explained that Zesco’s partner from Ndola had in the last two years been running a pilot project across the country and that the power utility company was satisfied with the results.
“As we go on to improve our system, we will be replacing those metres because now we have rolled out our fiber. Initially, we only had the backbone of fiber.
“But now we have gone to the next level of fiber where we have done metro meaning in our substations, we have fiber and therefore, the third level we will be taking that level rom our substations into various properties, that includes our homes,” he said.