Only pre-paid meters being issued to residential consumers

May 28, 2011 News

By Rabindra Rooplall

Guyana Power Light (GPL) will be issuing only pre-paid meters to new residential consumers and for tariff B consumers who are served by single phase, two-wire, 120-240 volt meters up to 80 amps and single phase three-wire meters up to 80 amps.
Field Services Manager of GPL, Looknauth Singh, said that the power company has lost billions of dollars from outstanding payments by consumers who either remove from a property without clearing their bills with GPL, and from electricity theft.
He noted that since the implementation of the new Electricity Sector Reform Act, GPL has decided not to issue post paid meters any longer.
Adding that many persons do not know the benefit of a pre-paid meter, he said, consumers are accustomed to a one-month credit by GPL. However, persons would find that they can economize with the pre-paid system and save money.
The manager explained that the pre-paid meters include two physical components. The meter box, which will be mounted on electrical poles outside of homes, or, as in the case of the Bourda Market, at a safe area in the vicinity of those consumers’ place of business.
The meter box will be connected to existing meters. The second component is a customer interface unit (CIU). This is a 12- key keypad with audible feedback that allows for the entry of tokens and the accessing of various management functions.
It also has a custom liquid crystal display which shows the remaining credit among other features. Each customer will be provided with a pamphlet outlining the available features and how to access them.
In this mode, electricity consumption over the current or past 30 days or 24 hours can be displayed. These along with the display of instantaneous power consumption can aid the consumer in prudent management of electrical energy.
The consumer can programme a specific amount of credit into his/her keypad at which point he/she may wish to be informed of remaining credit. The unit also comes with backup batteries, which have a five-year lifespan.
It was revealed that with the pre-paid meter consumers now have the ability to manage their consumption. And it is a lot less stressful having the prepaid meter because of payment of bills, bill due dates, meter readers, and bills estimation.
Electricity theft has been a major challenge for the power company as persons have been rampantly caught stealing electricity.
Several amendments such as the Electricity Sector Reform (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to break the culture of electricity theft has also been passed in the National Assembly.
This was designed to combat commercial losses GPL has been enduring over the past years due to illegal connections and electricity theft.

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Only pre-paid meters being issued to residential consumers

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