The revenue mobilisation of the Electricity Company of Ghana is set to improve as the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) has acquired a $12 million equipment to be make this possible.
The equipment which will integrate the ECG’s smart prepaid metering platforms (mobile application) was rolled out at the beginning of this year. It comprises of 40 point-of-sale devices, uninterruptable power supply (UPS) systems, 17 servers in six racks, laptops and printers.
Customers of ECG are set to experience greater flexibility in the payment of bills, irrespective of location after the installation and commissioning of the equipment, which has already been delivered to two sites at the ECG Project Office and its Legon District Office, both in Accra,
The commissioning of the equipment is scheduled to take place later this year.
The Chief Operating Officer of MiDA, Mr Julius Kpekpena, speaking to the media said
“The installation of the equipment would prevent incidents of prepaid server breakdowns or failures, which sometimes made it impossible for customers to top up or recharge their prepaid meters.”
“The days when customers could not buy prepaid credit because a prepaid server had failed will soon be behind the ECG. The new system has a primary site and a disaster recovery site, with an online real time back-up capability that will ensure that there is no server failure,”
The equipment according to him will enable customers of the ECG to purchase power even outside regions where they live.
In a statement issued by MiDA, they announced that they had taken delivery of the equipment.
It said the software needed for a fully functioning ECG meter management system was installed and tested prior to the shipment of the equipment to the country.
The statement also said consultants of the ECG and MiDA took part in the factory acceptance tests of the equipment and were satisfied that the system was complete with all the specifications needed to make meter management effective and efficient.
“The meter management system project was part of a Ghana Power Compact agreement aimed at ensuring a reduction in commercial losses, improvement in revenue collection and a component of a broader ECG financial and operational turnaround (EFOT) project.”
according to the MiDA.
A contractor, Messrs Siemens SA, is scheduled to reassemble the equipment and commence operational acceptance testing before the end of this week, as the system was expected to be operational in the beginning of October 2020.
The modernisation of utility operations and technical loss and outage reduction to help boost customer experience and ECG’s financial and operational strength are other activities under the project.
