Power retailer Manila Electric Co. will deploy smart meters to its entire customer base within the next decade, a top executive said Wednesday.
“AMI [advanced metering infrastructure] or smart metering technology is a game-changer in how we serve and empower our customers. Last year, we completed our preparatory activities for the massive rollout of smart meters,” Meralco chief operating officer Ronnie Aperocho said.
“This enables customers to monitor their electricity usage better and manage their consumption more efficiently. AMI also gives us better grid visibility, allowing us to detect outages or anomalies faster and to respond more quickly,” he said.
He said Meralco initially approved 140,000 smart meters, mostly under the prepaid electricity program, within a small area of its franchise. Around 100,000 smart meters have been installed so far.
“We are about to deploy these smart meters at scale to eventually cover 100 percent of our customer base—aiming for at least 11 million smart meters to be deployed within the next decade,” he said.
He said they plan to spread the rollout due to cost consideration as a single meter costs around $100.
He said they are also waiting for the regulatory approval to roll out the smart meters because it is part of the retail aggregation program (RAP).
“For us to support that or for us to implement that [RAP], we need to install smart meters. Because you can just imagine na every 5 minutes, we have to provide meter data to the market,” he said.
Aperocho said Meralco submitted a manifestation to the Energy Regulatory Commission for the AMI rollout.
“Because there is a timeline. And there are applications already. So, they accepted our manifestation to support the customer choice program, retail aggregation. Meralco has to buy the systems already, software, hardware, meters and all that to support it,” he said.
