Digital meters for electricity consumers

Dharma SRI ABEYRATNE

A new digital electricity meter manufactured in Sri Lanka would be introduced to electricity consumers shortly, instead of the electro-mechanical meter, Power and Energy Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said.

The new meter, the Minister said would first be introduced to the areas where electricity was supplied by Lanka Electricity Company (LECO). LECO was currently engaged in electricity transmitting activities in the Western and the Southern coastal areas to 469,000 customers. Accordingly, the prevailing electro mechanical electricity meter would be replaced by the new digital meter.

With the technical assistance of a Chinese institute, LECO has been manufacturing electro mechanical electricity meters, fulfilling the meter requirements of the Electricity Board from October 2008.

The Minister said that the digital meter have been installed in several houses as a pilot project. It had been noticed that these meters were in proper working condition.

Therefore, under LECO, digital electricity meters would be manufactured on a grand scale until the local electricity meter requirements were met.

Meanwhile the CEB's attention is drawn on implementing a prepaid payment system for electricity usage. Like in the usage of prepaid mobile telephone connectivities, the subscriber could use electricity and reload on credit.

Once the credit is over, the subscriber would have to reload credit so as to avoid automatic disconnection.

The subscriber could check his balance easily by using a mobile phone or the digital meter which would measure the electricity usage.

The subscriber then could have a firm idea concerning balance credit. Since many subscribers were reluctant to stand in queues for payment of bills, the new system was said to be highly attractive, the Minister added. In addition, the Minister said that electricity cable network could be used for many other customer services, such as providing Internet connections, telephone connections and as a data transferring mode.