Manila Bulletin
November 5, 2012, 10:04am
By MYRNA M. VELASCO
After concluding a deal with American firm GE on having it as a supplier of advanced metering infrastructure integrated solution (AMIIS), Manila Electric Company (Meralco) has announced that it is now all set to advance into commercial pilot its prepaid electricity service offer.
“We signed prepaid electricity system last October 3 with GE…so we’re looking by the end of this year for the technical pilot and by February to March next year, we wanted to do a commercial pilot,” Meralco senior vice president Alfredo S. Panlilio has noted in a briefing with reporters.
The initial order placed by the utility firm with GE will be for the rollout at its targeted pilot areas in Rizal which will cover 40,000 customers.
The more advanced commercial phase and the intent of broadening the coverage of the service will largely depend on the reception and customer feedback on embracing the prepaid electricity service as an option.
“If everything goes right in those commercial areas, especially in customer engagement and customer experience, we will do formal launch sometime in May or June,” Panlilio said.
Meralco has a customer base of 5.2 million, the bulk of which are residential end-users. Targeted mass penetration for the prepaid service will be the C-segment which accounts for the chunk of the utility firm’s residential customers.
Prepaid retail electricity is one technology offer where innovation will take its reign, including the consolidation of short messaging service (SMS) in the service chain.
Panlilio noted that the SMS integration in their prepaid electric meters was initially explored with Chikka, a free text messaging platform that has strategic link with all Philippine mobile phones.
Meralco has also been moving notches ahead when it comes to information technology (IT) system integration into its service offers – with the introduction of its mobile App “MOVE” or “MeralcO Virtual Engine” that will help customers track service offers and even power interruptions. It is downloadable in iPhones and other android-supported mobile operating systems.
The other linked technological innovation into Meralco’s smart grid ambition will be the targeted mass-scale deployment of electric vehicles.
“There are people who are interested in manufacturing e-vehicles locally, so we will be looking at their business case and if we can convince them to do cost-effective production of e-vehicles here,” Panlilio said.
He added that a charging station concept is currently being perfected, not only from the drawing board but into the actual business terrains.
“We’re sure from a charging station perspective that Meralco will be involved. So we are going to push that and we are working on a charging station concept at Mandaluyong business center this year and in Kamuning in 2013,” Panlilio said.
While working on a pilot rollout of prepaid electricity, Panlilio emphasized that policy matters are also being sorted out extensively with government and other stakeholders.
“We were active and aggressive in engaging more smart grid stakeholders in the industry – the DOE (Department of Energy), the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission), even the academe and other DUs (distribution utilities),” he said.
Panlilio noted that “everybody agrees that there are things we can do and that government has a big role so we can move forward.”
On the charging stations for e-vehicles, he stressed that “we really want to measure the business case and making sure that full systems are in place, which also include policies from government.” source
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