Prepayment Meters
Usage of prepayment meters will extensively improve the revenue collection of the utilities. There are a number of ways in that prepayment assures revenue protection. These are:
1. The prepayment meter assures revenue upfront in which is before the electricity is consumed. In case a credit is given (in prepayment) there is a zero time gap among consumption and payment. This decrease a cash collection cycle.
2. Errors in meter reading, billing and data entry are altogether eliminated as the meter dispenses only in which amount of electricity for that it has been paid for. Punching errors through consumers (in case of key pad based prepayment meters) are also eliminated, as the meter does not accept erroneous keying/punching.
3. Prepayment eliminates the meter readers and bill distributors thereby not only eliminating potential sources of corruption but also the costs incurred through utilities towards their meter readers and supervisors, and the workforce and associated costs in running the billing centres. The activity begin and ends in the cash collection, that happens by user friendly dispensation centres, and consumers do not have to queue at Utility offices to pay their bills.
4. The prepayment meter comes along with in-built load limiters that could be programmed to disconnect a meter in case the load is exceeded. This is through far most effectual in limiting the loading of the distribution system. This helps in avoiding overloading and thereby limiting the technical loss in service cables and avoiding hotspots in connections as the load always remains inside the permissible limits.
5.Another benefits of prepayment meter is its capacity to return (or dispense back) unused amount to the consumer. This characteristics helps in tracking changes in temporary ownership of connections (i.e., change of hands among one tenant to another) - an aspect that is never probable in credit metering.