MERALCO STEPS UP EFFORTS TO PROMOTE USE OF SMART METERS

Manila Electric Co. is revving up its push for customer adoption of smart meters, aiming to install 45,000 such meters over the next 13 months.

During Meralco’s annual stockholders meeting held online on Tuesday, president Ray Espinosa said the rollout would be in adand dition to the 102,000 smart meters already installed for their prepaid electricity services.

“By the first half of 2021, we would have installed a total of 145,000 smart meters,” Espinosa said.

He said smart meters provide real-time data on customer’s power usage and other information that are helpful in managing monthly bills.

“Beyond the 145,000 smart meters, Meralco continues to work with the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) for the approval of 1 million more smart meters which could be deployed over three years,” Espinosa said. “Meralco’s roadmap is to have 3.3 million customers on smart meters over the next eight years.”

Earlier, Sen. Sherwin

Gatchalian said Meralco should issue a separate bill that “is more transparent and will be very clear to the consumers,” that would show “underestimate, overestimate billing computation during ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) when billing was based on average consumption of previous three months.”

Gatchalian, who heads the

Senate committee on energy, said in a statement an additional page on the monthly bill providing such details would address “mounting complaints of sudden surge in supposed electricity consumption” for which consumers have been billed for the month of May.

Gatchalian called out Meralco “for failing to provide clear and sufficient information leaving consumers confused and appalled.”

During the ECQ when reading of meters could not be done, Meralco—following the directive of the Erc—billed customers an estimate of their monthly consumption based on the previous three months’ billing.