Veco prepares to test prepaid meter system

To give more options to their customers in Metro Cebu, the Visayan Electric Company (Veco) will launch a pilot prepaid metering system by the middle of the year.

They would target 300 connections for the pilot project, said Sebastian Lacson, Veco chief operations officer, in an interview yesterday.

Lacson said the scheme would cover a cross section of society from rural to urban areas to high-end subdivisions.

Lacson said aside from looking at the feasibility of offering this option, this would also show if it would be acceptable in the

market.

“We still have to see if the consumers will like it, see to it that it is acceptable through the project,” Lacson said.

Veco had already prepared the system and equipment like the Standard Transfer Specifications platform, to support the pre-paid electricity scheme.

partners

Lacson said that they are looking at dovetailing the project to their existing partnership with Globe BanKo which is one of their Third Party Collection partners, which currently provides the most accessible means to buy load using the bank’s platform.

For Veco, the prepaid electricity scheme is an attractive option that it can offer to the budget conscious consumers as well those in the public sector and people who are operating boarding houses and apartments.

At present, Veco has over 340,000 clients within their franchise area from San Fernando in the south and Lilo-an in the north.

In 2009, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) issued the rules governing the prepaid metering scheme for electricity, officially allowing distribution utilities like Veco to begin offering the service to their customers.

The scheme is expected to help residential customers manage their consumption of electricity.