The Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) is searching for suppliers of prepaid meters.In an advertisement yesterday in Kaieteur News, the state-owned company invited tenders for the meters which deadline is set to close on March 25, 2015.GPL reportedly has more than 40,000 subscribers on board for its prepaid meter program.Tenders are to be submitted with valid compliance certificates from the National Insurance Scheme, Guyana Revenue Authority and a bid security of two percent of the amount being tendered.GPL has been reporting a hike in the demand for prepaid meters. Over 40,000 subscribers of the utility company’s 170,000-odd customers have already hooked up.Previously, GPL had been dealing with post-paid meters but under new programmes, the company has moved to introduce the prepaid service. First introduced in 2009, the key-pad prepaid meters were slow off the start but picked up steam drastically.GPL said that it has quite a number of applications on file.Guyana has purchased the prepaid meters from as far as South Africa.However, the company has been moving to introduce what it calls smart meters which could be read from its control rooms.In June last year, GPL said that it has introduced new technology which will allow customers to check their consumption of electricity online.According to the state-owned company yesterday,Josh Perkins Jersey, it has completed the installation phase of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Project and has inaugurated its customer involvement phase.Initially, GPL customers who resided or own businesses within the grid of Avenue of the Republic to Vlissengen Road and North Road to South Road in Georgetown, were able to register online and read their consumption in real time from any internet-ready device from anywhere in the world, in the pilot phase.GPL is now studying whether the AMI technology will allow a prepaid feature, GPL’s Chief Executive Officer, Bharrat Dindyal said yesterday.The AMI is an integrated system of smart meters, communication networks and data management systems that enables two-way communication between GPL and customers.“AMI meter consumption can be read online and only require customers to sign up using their account number and name. Customers can access updated readings of their electricity consumption every 15 minutes or hourly.”GPL has said that the design of the technology also allows a smart comparative analysis for hourly, daily, monthly and yearly consumptions.In essence, GPL will be able to track unusual usage by customers and even in cases, where customers would be using bypass to stop the meters from running, AMI would be able to pick up the patterns.
