Siemens’s metres to cut theft of electricity
SIEMENS, the global technology giants, last week launched its Smart Metering Advanced Revenue Protection model that is says will help combat electricity theft and poor revenue collection in South Africa.
Eskom has said it loses R20 billion annually due to electricity theft across the country.
Shahriar Khayyam, vice-president of Energy Management: Siemens Southern and Eastern Africa, said South African utilities lose between 10 and 45 percent of revenue to tampering and copper cable theft, and that the company’s smart metering, combined with tampering alerts, lets them respond live to this threat.
“In an economy still coming to terms with junk status, next-generation advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technology could rescue local government from crippling uncollected electricity bills, making capital more readily available to be more efficiently spent on service delivery,” Khayyam said.
He added that the AMI technology had capabilities to detect electricity theft and resolve the inaccurate billing issues.
“The deployment of a smart meter on to a large power users premises will lead to a check of existing Voltage Transformer (VT) and Current Transformer (CT) infrastructure, which is critical to accurate billing. Coupled to this, the deployment of the smart meter can also check for previous signs of theft and lead to an elimination of any future theft from the customer due to automatic tamper alarms.”
Protracted battle
Eskom has been engaged in a protracted battle with some of the country’s defaulting municipalities over monies owned to the power utility.
The power utility was earlier this year granted permission by the North Gauteng High Court to switch off lights of eight municipalities.
Siemens said it recently did a test run of its smart metering service in a metropolitan municipality with 550 000 meters, and the results show that the utility operating in the area has been able to reduce its debtor days from 155 to less than 15.
Khayyam said the communication capability of AMI smart meters lets them send accurate power consumption data directly to a power utility via a network of application servers, enabling them to be paid immediately.
“This dramatically improves revenue collection and cash flow compared to current standard transfer specification meters that are limited to manually recorded prepayment functions residing on the meter.”
During the Africa Utility Week held in Cape Town last week, Eskom and Huawei announced that they would jointly develop smart grid solutions for the South African market.
The partnership aims to accelerate digital transformation in the power industry through the development of Internet of Things, and cloud and cyber security solutions.
In Nigeria, Huawei helped Ikeja Electric build an advanced metering system with smart meters collecting daily readings before they are sent to a control centre.