The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is to introduce a new metering system called Automated Meter Reading (ARM), which will allow ECG to communicate with the meter from their offices without having to visit where they are stationed.

The new meters, also called the Smart Meters, will allow the ECG to engage disconnections and get notifications when the meter is tampered with.

Ing. Mrs. Sariel A. Etwire, section manager of metering services of ECG, announced this in Accra at a meeting with editors organised by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC).

She said the smart metering would also phase out the variety of meters already in existence.

She said her outfit was installing electricity meters that have automated meter reading facility, adding that the move is to monitor the meter 24 hours in their office without necessarily going to the customer’s house.

Mrs. Etwire explained that, currently, three prepaid metering systems with GPRS communication in their pilot stages are to be deployed.

According to her, the Nuri System – a prepaid metering system with GPRS & Zigbee with communication – is to be deployed in the Tema and Accra East regions.

She announced that AMR metering has been introduced for high-consuming customers above 5000kWh per month.

Mrs. Etwire said the AMR deployment for SLT and CTNSLT Customers has yielded several benefits.

She announced that ECG has replaced over 350,000 electromechanical meters with electronic meters.

According to her, re-routing of service tails was ongoing in two operational regions: Accra East & Tema. She identified power outage notification for effective management, reliable source of data for power, outages studies and reports as some of the advantages of the new technologies being introduced by ECG.

William Hutton Mensah, Managing Director of ECG, said in spite of all the challenges, ECG has managed to reduce losses by a record 4% in one year.

He said the 4% reduction in losses is a record in the industry the world over.