The Prepaid Retail Electric Service (PRES) of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) has so far signed up 25,000 interested users and the utility firm vowed to activate a total of 10,000 prepaid meters by end of this month.
“As of July 26, we have a total of 25,000 applications. We have already activated 8,017 customers and the target is to breach the 10,000 mark by end of July,” said Alfredo S. Panlilio, Meralco senior vice president.
PRES is being offered on a voluntary basis. To avail, a customer may go to any of Meralco’s business centers and pay an initial consumable load of P200.
PRES customers may purchase load in denominations of P100, P200, P300, P500 and P1,000. The customer will receive a top-up confirmation from their mobile phones.
If existing Meralco subscribers want to shift to prepaid electricity, no meter charge will be collected from them.
On a daily basis, PRES customers will receive a free SMS informing them of their remaining prepaid amount. The customer will also receive a warning via SMS three days before estimated depletion of load and disconnection.
Based on PRES rules, customers will be allowed to experience PRES on a trial basis for six months. Thereafter, they may continue to avail themselves of the PRES or revert to postpaid.
“The customer behavior of the first 8,000 customers that we saw is that they load four to five times a month. Fifty percent of them reload in the denomination of P100,” said Panlilio, adding that 70 percent of the load transaction was done through e-load via their mobile phones.
The service is initially available in some parts of Manila, Cainta, Quezon City, San Juan, Caloocan, Pasig and Cavite.
The utility firm was given the green light to roll out 40,000 electricity meters, which Meralco had wanted to finish by end of the year, at the latest.
Anticipating a huge demand for prepaid electricity service, Meralco asked the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to authorize another 100,000 meters for households interested in the service.
Its application, however, is still pending with the agency. Meralco needs to file for approval of meter purchase and installation before it can roll out the service across its franchise area.
“We filed for another 100,000 meters with the ERC. That forms part of our capex [capital expenditures] filing for this year,” Panlilio had said. The utility allotted $7 million in 2012 for the deployment of the service, covering technical and commercial tests, as well as the commercial rollout for the 40,000 meters.
It tapped General Electric Co. as the system integrator for the advanced metering structure of the service; Orga Systems for billing operations, and Ecologic Analytics for the meter data-management system.
The prepaid service offering will enable customers to budget their electricity consumption. The system also informs consumers if they need to reload immediately to avoid disconnection.
Prepaid electricity is also being used in other countries such as Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, Meralco said.
The utility distributes power in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite and Rizal, as well as parts of Batangas, Laguna, Quezon and Pampanga.