VECO eyes use of smart meters

CEBU, Philippines - The Visayan Electric Company (VECO) plans to use smart meters, which would allow the power distributor to access them online and the consumers to easily monitor their consumption.

This was bared by Engr. John Lex James Canoy, VECO’s power metering services officer-in-charge, during a special forum yesterday dubbed as “Power Simplified: Knowing the Nuances of the Power Industry.”

 The smart meter is equipped with a communication medium that allows remote reading to be done.

Advantages

Canoy pointed out the advantages of the smart meter, wherein VECO could already read the meters online without even sending meter readers to the different households and that they could also control the meter remotely once it is due for disconnection.

“Instead of going to the site, we could already disconnect it online and those meters placed on the higher parts of the posts will be read through remote reading,” he said.

On the part of the consumers, they could already determine their power charges per hour once they will log-in on their accounts.

 Interestingly, prepaid metering is one of the added features of the smart meter. This system will allow the consumer to limits consumption.

Pilot

 Canoy said that they installed 50 smart meters last January in selected households along Jakosalem St. for their pilot.

These were, however, disconnected last month since there is no approval yet from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

“We could not implement it, because we don’t have any approval yet from the ERC and with regards to the cost it is quiet expensive that’s why we still need to talk about this and we need to plan this properly. But this is a long term plan,” said Canoy.

 “We have to wait for ERC’s guidelines. We will also get direction as to also assume the cost of the meters. Once the guidelines will be there we could already work it out,” he added.

Stable power

Meanwhile, VECO senior vice president and chief operating officer, Sebastian Lacson proudly announced that power supply in Central Visayas is stable and they plan to build more coal power plants in the Visayas grid.

“Our power supply is stable and we’re super okay. We also want to produce more coal power plants to ensure that there will be no more brownout,” Lacson said.

He also explained why there was a change in the rates.

This is because the Philippines is an archipelago and belongs not only to one grid but to three semi-separate grids namely Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Another thing is that the public doesn’t really pay the true cost to power companies due to changes in the rates of the generation and transmission.

Power cost explained

 Engr. Jeffrey Belotindos, VECO key account retail services supervisor, explained that the change in Generation Rate depends on the following variables — variable capital cost of power plants are indexed to forex, Philippines and US CPI, the fuel cost is dependent on international price movement, the supply mix changes and the GenCos seek economic relief.

 The transmission rate also changes due to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) Maximum Allowable Revenue (MAR) and that NGCP demand charge varies monthly.

Another speaker in yesterday’s forum was Dennis Verallo, utility economics group supervisor, on the Role of Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), the rate making and the rate setting. —/NLQ (FREEMAN)