The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is seeking approval from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to implement starting June this year its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), a major project of the utility firm that will help customers manage their energy usage, thereby resulting in savings.
“Subject to the necessary capital expenditure [capex],” Meralco asked the commission in its March 10 application that “the AMI project be approved, and Meralco be allowed to deploy the basic AMI services under the terms and conditions in this application starting June 1”.
In order for Meralco to implement the project, it needs to install smart meters within AMI-activated areas for all new and reconstructing Meralco customers. Within AMI-activated areas, Meralco will replace the electric meters of existing customers.
AMI meters will be mandatorily deployed to residential and nonresidential customers.
These smart meters are capable of detecting outages when the power to the meter is lost. The smart meter will transmit the outage information to Meralco’s head-end system via AMI.
Depending on the nature of the outage, the customer shall be informed of the power outage and the cause of such through Web portal and the customer’s preferred channel. For widespread outages, notifications shall be sent via social media.
Meralco will also make available an online Web portal to provide a consumption-monitoring and reporting mechanism for AMI customers.
With this portal, customers can access their present consumption, previous billing and historical monthly consumption, among others.
The smart meters is just one of the three major components of the AMI. The other two are the communication infrastructure and the implementing systems. These two are vital in transmitting the data from the smart meters to Meralco’s network in order for it to deliver the AMI services.
Meralco will also offer AMI supplemental services, such as prepaid electricity under K-Load, net metering, demand response, advance outage management, home area network, electric vehicle supply equipment management, smart streetlights, management of distributed energy resources and distribution automation-infrastructure support.
These supplemental AMI services also need the green light of the ERC.
“Meralco’s AMI deployment strategy [aims] to scale up AMI quickly and efficiently to maximize customer and utility benefits,” Meralco said.
To efficiently expand the AMI coverage, Meralco will take the existing coverage areas as starting points. From Manila, Makati, Mandaluyong, Pasig and portions of Rizal, Meralco will be activating adjacent cities, such as San Juan, Quezon City, Taguig, Marikina, Pasay, Caloocan and Pateros, as AMI-covered areas.
“This concentric expansion will continue until coverage of Metro Manila is completed in regulatory year [RY] 2019 and the whole franchise in RY 2022,” it said.
From the identified coverage areas per RY and the proposed meter installations and replacement, Meralco will be activating an estimated total of 3 million customers and targeted points within the distribution network by 2024.
Meralco said it will inform and educate customers on what AMI is all about and its benefits.