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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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Wednesday, June 14, 2017
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ILOILO City – The Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) unanimously approved an ordinance requiring Panay Electric Company (PECO) to establish a meter reading card system that regularly updates people of their electricity consumption.
Under this system, PECO must display in each consumer’s house or establishment a card on which the monthly consumption would be indicated every meter reading period.
“This will hopefully avoid confusion and billing questions,” said Councilor Joshua Alim.
The SP was recently flooded with complaints from consumers claiming PECO was overcharging them.
With the card reading system, people could easily monitor their monthly electricity consumption and make comparisons, said Alim explained.
If there are discrepancies in the meter reading, consumers can easily call PECO’s attention even before the bills arrive, he added.
The ordinance prohibits the tampering of the meter reading card. The culprit faces a P3,000 fine and/or one month to three months imprisonment.
Section 6 of the ordinance also requires PECO to comply with Article 11 of the Magna Carta for Residential Electricity Consumers: the electric meter should be not more than three meters high or less than 1.52 high from the ground.
Early this year, PECO announced it will be improving its metering system using the modern Automated Metering Infrastructure.
The installation of these “smart meters” is seen as a new era for PECO as these provide many benefits, the most crucial of which is accuracy in meter reading since no manpower will be needed to read the meters.
PECO sees smart meters as a “permanent solution” for billing issues of its customers.
“All readings are programmed to go directly to the computers of PECO without any actual meter readers needed on the field. This eliminates the human factor in meter reading and customers can fully rely on the accuracy of the billing,” said Mikel Afzelius, PECO’s corporate communications officer.
Another advantage of the smart meter is being tamper proof, he said.
“These new meters have sensors inside it that if anyone will try to tamper them they will automatically shut down and be reported in PECO’s system,” said Afzelius./PN
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