Smart metering to reduce wastage in govt

Electricity distributor Umeme has introduced a prepaid metering system dubbed ‘smart metering system' that is aimed at cutting government wastage and diversion of utility allocations.

This was an initiative that was started by both government and Umeme to streamline the utility bills of government agencies.

The system has been running for close to a year now, according to Thomas Tondo, Umeme's Mbarara area manager. It has so far covered 33 government ministries, departments and agencies.

"This was meant to ensure that the money allocated for electricity fi nds its way to the supplier's account," Tondo said over the weekend.

With the smart metering, Tondo explained, credits are loaded onto the agency's account quarterly, basing on the energy allocation provided by the Government for the institution. "This has enabled the institutions to manage their costs basing on the allocations that have been given, with Umeme now able to collect that money upfront. Some of these institutions had very huge consumption that they could not manage. The war on wastage has been successfully won by the Government," Tondo said.

Tondo also explained that Umeme advised the Government on how much money should be allocated to each agency after reviewing their (agencies') historical consumption. He, however, added that the institutions participated and their projected consumption. The system has an online and remote meter interface through which the consumer is able to see how much is left on their utility account.

The system, according to Tondo, has enabled the Government to eliminate accumulation of arrears owed to the utility company. "We are no longer accumulating arrears on the government installations because whatever was outstanding was put to a different account for management," he said. "Whatever is allocated is what is used. There is no more growth of arrears, which is good for us and government," Tondo added.

Benefits to the customers Stephen Ilungole, Umeme's communications and media relations manager, said the 33 entities had optimised their energy usage as result of this technology and registered a sustained drop in consumption to the tune of sh200m over the period of May to July 2017.

Some of the entities making a major contribution to this, according to Ilungole, are Uganda Prisons, Makerere University, Uganda Bureau of Statistics and Uganda Police and he attributes this to change in consumer behaviour.

"There has been a registered change in customers' behavior towards the application of the time-of-use tariff. Customers like the Uganda Prisons, Luzira, have been able to offl oad non critical loads during the shoulder and peak tariff periods and also transfer some activities to the offpeaks period," Ilungole said.

Challenges
However, the technology has also been met by resistance from some agencies for reasons like fear of insuffi cient funding and installation of technology for sensitive entities like hospitals, Uganda Blood Transfusion, defence ministry and Prisons.