Muscat - An ambitious initiative to introduce Automated Meter Reading (AMR) services for the Sultanate's electricity sector is expected to get under way this year, according to a top official of Nama Group, the holding company of state-owned procurement, transmission and distribution utilities. Omar al Wahaibi, CEO, said automated meter reading services --also known as smart metering -- will primarily be targeted at large industrial and commercial customers whose electricity consumption exceeds a certain annual limit.
"We are leveraging new technology to enhance the customer experience," Al Wahaibi said. "We have just started a project to implement Automated Meter Reading for high value customers; these are customers who consume more than 150 megawatt-hours (MWh) per annum," he stated at a recent briefing on the Group's financial and operational performance. Last year, Nama Group appointed CESI Middle East, a subsidiary of technical consulting and engineering company CESI, to formulate a roadmap for smart-metering implementation in the Sultanate.
CESI was tasked with planning the rollout of automated meter reading, outlining security measures and standards, designing the market messaging system, detailing the solution architecture and system-level designs to be employed in the AMR system, identifying meter specifications, and meter data management system and charting out the testing strategy, governance practices, risk evaluation and mitigation practices. As many as 12,000 high value accounts distributed among all five distribution utilities are expected to be brought under the purview of the smart metering project by 2017-end.
A number of international companies are bidding for the contract to supply the smart meters and associated communication devices. Separately, Nama Group is also looking to appoint a System Integrator whose brief is to oversee the design, customisation, installation of the meters. Importantly, the rollout of smart metering will be a prelude to the planned implementation of Cost Reflective Tariffs (CRT) for large electricity customers. Consumers subject to Cost Reflective Tariffs will be billed at the actual economic cost of generating and supplying electricity to them. CRT effectively does away with government subsidy currently applied to all consumers.
"Automated Meter Reading will hopefully -- when the decision is taken -- enable us to implement Cost Reflective Tariffs to (High Value) customers. It will also help these customers understand their consumption patterns," Al Wahaibi stated. Besides enabling the delivery of superior to the customers, smart metering technology will also enhance the quality and speed of processing of metering data, improve billing accuracy, reduce debtor delays, mitigate losses and ease query-related costs, according to authorities.
© Oman Daily Observer 2016
