By 
The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) has launched the smart meter project in Harare for medium to large power users. The roll out has started with the capital city cascading to the uttermost parts of the country.
Addressing various stakeholders today at Harare Polytechnic, ZETDC Acting Managing Director Engineer Ralph Katsande said the region will witness an installation of 2500 smart meters to high priority customers who are still using the postpaid platform and those with a negative debt history.
“Harare region has over 300 000 customer vase with a total of 268 484 installed prepaid meters thus giving us a balance of 40 363 points to be installed. The region will also witness installation of 2500 smart meters to high priority customers and those companies with negative debt history,” he said.
Postpaid clients owe the power utility ZWL$42billion in arrears and installation of smart meters will enable the reduction of an ever growing debt-risk.
The rollout is expected to be complete by July 2023 as all postpaid clients would have been migrated to using smart meters.
” The utility is expectant that by end of the second quarter, every client on postpaid platform would have been moved to prepaid meter system. In that regard, installations on domestic load limit points will in the process be modified to facilitate prepaid meter installations,”he said
Engineer Katsande added that smart meters are technologically advanced than the regular prepaid meters as the utility company can communicate with the user’s unit. The smart meter also allows remote management of accounts and it has advanced security features that users can’t temper around with it.
“Furthermore smart meters will bring more convenience and security to our customers as it is more intelligent, anti tamper and fights any embedded with fraud detection systems. The new smart meters are compatible with future generation of technologies for example 4G/LTE and it comes with a remote web portal monitoring platform”
Comments