Between July and August 2024, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) experienced a substantial revenue shortfall exceeding GH¢893,158,654. This shortfall is attributed to several factors related to the company’s ongoing upgrade of its prepayment metering system.
The revenue loss was primarily due to customers not paying for the full amount of electricity consumed, accumulating debts, and the process of replacing outdated or malfunctioning meters. The upgrade aims to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the metering system but has temporarily affected revenue collection.
William Boateng, the ECG’s director of communications, told Graphic Online that the organization had to replace a few outdated meters because the PURC had mandated that it not run any outdated machinery. The meters that were being replaced were the BXC, PNX, Ecash 1, 2, 3, 4, Nuri, and BOT meters.
“The meters on these have reached their full potential”. He emphasized that they needed to be changed since they were not operating accurately and that once the replacement was finished, everything should stabilize, and the company’s revenue fortunes should improve.
Mr. Boateng clarified that consumers with outstanding credit balances on their previous meters will get refunds after the meter replacement procedure is finished in an interview with Emmanuel Bonney of Graphic Online. Either remotely or using tokens that customers manually load into their new meters, these refunds will be handled.
He asked for patience from all the impacted customers, telling them that their credit amounts will be transferred once the required reconciliations are finished.
Mr. Boateng added that some customers’ inability to make purchases is a result of malfunctioning meters. The business’s metering system can still bill these customers in spite of these problems because it is based on their past consumption data.
According to Mr. Boateng, if it is discovered that a customer is in debt following the replacement, the ECG will provide payment plans that are customized to each individual’s financial situation and would enable them to pay off their outstanding bills gradually.
He also added that, the Company’s old metering system was being upgraded to a more advanced and automated system under its Loss Reduction Project (LRP). “Owing to this, the old metering system was not communicating properly with their servers,” the ECG Director of Communications said.
Mr. Boateng explained that customers who purchased power during the outage were not seeing deductions because their meters had momentarily converted to a postpaid mode as a result of a communication failure. He said that the system required to reconcile customer purchase histories with the actual power used during the communication outage once the servers and metering system were back in communication.
Following the reconciliation process based on customers’ consumption history, some customers were found to owe the company and had to visit ECG offices to settle their debts. Meanwhile, others had credit balances that were refunded.
According to Mr. Boateng, customers who were in debt expressed unhappiness since they thought they had more purchasing power and were not aware that they owed the company money. He made it clear that these customers wouldn’t have their access to the national grid cut off. Rather, a payment plan customized to their financial situation
He added that the prepayment system change would have an impact on about 935,962 meters. Under the current LRP program, 488,223 obsolete meters had already been replaced as of July of this year.
SOURCE https://dew360.net
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