Commercial rollout of prepaid power meters from next year

MUSCAT — Prepaid electricity meters will be commercially available across Muscat Governorate starting from 2013, according to a senior official of Muscat Electricity Distribution Company (MEDC), which oversees electricity distribution and supply across the capital region.

The devices — which are designed to help consumers rationalise their power consumption and even prevent electricity theft or tampering — will be available to MEDC customers seeking the prepaid option over the present system of post-paid services.

According to Mansoor Talib al Hinai, MEDC’s Chief Operations Officer — Supply, the planned rollout follows a successful pilot involving the installation of around 500 prepaid meters in key neighbourhoods around the capital. That pilot, launched in 2010, was the first of its kind involving prepaid power meters in the Gulf region, he said.

Significantly, MEDC is also planning to ramp up the replacement of analogue electricity meters with tamperproof digital meters across its network.

First introduced in 2008, around 15,000 replacements are planned every year. Digital meters will also be installed at the premises of the esti- mated 20,000 new customers who are plugged into the network every year. Already, bulk customers with current transformer-based (CT) meters have been moved to the digital metering system, Al Hinai said.

Further, the distribution and supply company is studying the introduction of Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) technology across its network. AMR allows for meter readings to be remotely read and for customers to be automatically billed by the distributor.

It saves the company the bother of having a meter reader visit the premises of every customer to take a reading of their electricity meters.

According to Al Hinai, around 2,000 large consumers will initially be covered as part of a pilot scheme. AMR will eventually be rolled out to cover some 20,000 customers over the next five years, he added.