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CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION
Smart solution for overcoming
barriers to municipal cash flow
and revenue collection
Billions of rand in debt will accumulate and become more difficult
to recover from defaulting municipalities, unless they adopt smarter
and more efficient technology. In an economy still coming to terms
with junk status, next-generation Advanced Metering Infrastructure
(AMI) technology could rescue local government from crippling
uncollected electricity bills, making capital more readily available to
be more efficiently spent on service delivery.
Efficiently bringing power to the people is a highly challenging task
in SA, and although Eskom has made tremendous strides with smart
metering technology, many municipalities are buckling under the
pressure of more than 150 days of debt. This is a major contributor
to the power utility’s crippling R6 billion shortfall in revenue. Puni-
tive supply cuts to these municipalities are a necessary last resort to
ensure financial stability at Eskom.
But the fact remains these communities are negatively impacted
by interrupted electricity supply to their homes, schools, businesses
and hospitals. SA utilities lose between 10 and 45% of revenue to
tampering and copper cable theft.
The Siemens
AMI smart metering
technology combined with tampering alerts lets them respond live
to this threat.The communication capability of AMI smart meters lets
them send accurate power consumption data directly to a power
utility via a network of application servers, enabling them to be paid
immediately. This dramatically improves revenue collection and
cash flow compared to current StandardTransfer Specification (STS)
meters that are limited to manually recorded prepayment functions
residing on the meter.
A large metropolitan municipality with 550 000 meters recently
tested new AMI metering technology on 7 000 large power users
that made up 56% of consumption.The utility was immediately able
to reduce its debtor days from 155 to -15.
Another benefit of AMI smart meters is improved billing accuracy
for pre- and post-payment, as anomalies like lightning surges are
accounted for and consumption spikes are rectified before the user
is incorrectly billed.
This eliminates the need to manually read meters and to have a
large debtors’ department chasing legitimate and disputed payments.
AMI meter data management also allows for demand response,
data analytics, load management, as well as integration to the likes
of SCADA to help utilities to manage a smart grid more accurately
and efficiently, adding to the value of its spend.
AMI smart meters also allow for the incorporation of other utilities
such as water and gas into one consolidated bill that is linked to a
personal user profile.
Enquiries: Martin Kuhlmann.Tel. +27 (0) 11 652 2231 or
CABLE + ACCESSORIES
ROUND UP
21
June ‘17
Electricity+Control