Meralco fine-tunes prepaid power scheme

MANILA, Philippines - Manila Electric Co., the country’s biggest power distribution firm, is now fine-tuning the details of its prepaid retail electricity scheme for the expected commercial pilot testing by the middle of the year, a ranking official said.

“We’re giving it until mid-year because we want to make sure that we are running well,” Alfredo S. Panlilio, Meralco’s senior vice president and head of customer retail services, told reporters yesterday on the sidelines of the International Research Exchange Asia Meeting 2013 jointly organized by IERE and Meralco.

Meralco hopes to cover around 100 to 200 households for the technical pilot testing at the larger-scale commercial pilot testing with around 2,000 households.

Households availing of the program can go to Meralco business centers to reload but eventually, Meralco would allow reloading in Bayad Centers and Smart centers nationwide.

“It’s still being tested now. It’s in the works already,” Panlilio said.

“For all the systems and everything, the budget is around $7 million. This includes the prepaid system and the analytic system integration,” he said.

Panlilio said the pilot activities are meant to determine the viability of the planned prepaid platforms, the prepaid meters and the possible troubleshooting mechanisms.

Meralco decided to provide prepaid retail electricity to its consumers to allow them to budget their electricity consumption as well as expenses. It would also enable them to monitor their electricity consumption as it happens.

The prepaid meter systems can tell consumers if their prepaid load is still enough for a given period and thus warn them if they need to reload to avoid disconnection.