- The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), between July and August 2024, recorded a revenue shortfall of over GH¢893,158,654.
- Mr Boateng said that customers with credit balances on their old meters would receive refunds, either remotely or through generated tokens, upon the replacement.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), between July and August 2024, recorded a revenue shortfall of over GH¢893,158,654 as part of the ongoing process of upgrading its prepayment metering system in its operational areas.
According to the company, the loss resulted from customers not paying for the amount of power consumed, indebtedness, and the ongoing process of replacing malfunctioning or obsolete meters.
ECG’s Director of Communications, William Boateng, noted that some obsolete meters needed to be replaced, as the exercise was sanctioned by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC). PURC mandated that ECG should not operate with obsolete equipment and named those being replaced as the BXC, PNX, Ecash 1, 2, 3, 4, Nuri, and BOT meters.
Boateng said that upon the replacement, customers with credit balances on their old meters would receive refunds remotely or through generated tokens, which the customer would manually load onto the meter.
He appealed to all affected customers to exercise patience since their credit balances would be transferred to them after the necessary reconciliations. He disclosed that other groups of customers were not purchasing power because their meters were faulty.
The ECG Director of Communication indicated that, though these meters are faulty or obsolete, the company’s metering system can still bill such customers based on their consumption history. Mr Boateng said upon the replacement, customers who were found to be indebted would be given a payment plan to settle their indebtedness based on their ability to pay.
He noted that the company’s old metering system was being upgraded to a more advanced and automated system under its Loss Reduction Project (LRP). “Owing to this, the old metering system was not communicating properly with their servers,” the ECG Director of Communications added.
According to him, because of the communication failure, customers who purchased power were not being deducted since the meters transitioned into a postpaid mode.
Boateng added that when the connection between the servers and the metering system was normalised, the system had to reconcile customers’ purchase histories with the power consumed during the communication break.
In addition, he said that upgrading the prepayment systems would affect about 935,962 meters, adding that 488,223 of the old meters had been replaced under the LRP as of July this year and that the exercise was ongoing.