Power utility, Zesa Holdings has set a target to install an initial 4 000 prepaid smart electricity meters in industries, an official has said.While ordinary prepaid meters are like till points, smart meters are more complex in that they have the ability to communicate with the central system at Zesa to report meter by-passes and tempering and low consumption among other things.Zesa chief executive Engineer Josh Chifamba said the power utility is finalising the framework for the installation of smart meters for industries.
“As we speak, we are in the process of adjudicating for smart meters; our target to finish adjudication is on November 30 (tomorrow).
“We have called bidders to demonstrate and we will then report the results to the State Procurement Board,” he said.
Eng Chifamba said Zesa would start by installing 4 000 smart meters in the first phase.
“We are starting with 4 000 smart meters for large power users. So when we did our load focusing looking at the industry which is running; we saw that we cannot go above 4 000 meters.”
He added, “So we are starting with 4 000 meters and when we see that we are getting confidence with the technology, we will deploy more.”
Zesa has said prepaid electricity metering system was the only solution to curb defaulting.
The power utility is owed in excess of $1 billion by defaulters and corporates account for over 60 percent of that total. — New Ziana.