Electricity Ministry cancels tender for 50,000 smart electricity metres, replaces with another

Last updated: August 25, 2015 7:34 pm

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A picture taken 20 April 2006 shows high voltage electric lines of the French power company RTE, in Blandy-Les-Tours, south of Paris. A surge in electricity demand in Germany due to cold weather triggered blackouts across western Europe on 05 November 2006, leaving about 10 percent of French consumers without power, electricity operators said. "We weren't very far from a European blackout," Pierre Bornard, a member of the board of directors of the French power company RTE. Parts of Italy and Spain also experienced power outages.

By Mohamed Farag

The Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy has announced it has cancelled the tender for supplying 50,000 smart electricity metres that were needed for the South Cairo Electricity Distribution Company.

The cancelled tender, which had been made on the back of five offers, was replaced by another in an announcement several days ago, and will supply 3m prepaid electricity metres, the ministry said.

Ministry sources disclosed that the five companies who presented their technical and financial offers were informed of the decision to cancel the tender without giving reasons, in accordance with the tenders’ regulations. Although the financial and technical offers of supplying the 50,000 smart metres had already been analysed, new offers will be presented with two envelopes, technical and financial, to supply 3m metres.

The sources added that there are 12 Arab and international companies who have bought the specifications of the new tender, including Elsewedy Electric, Siemens, Global, Banha Electronics, Huawei, ZTE, and Gama.

They explained that it was agreed upon that 5% of the metres will be used as an experimental batch. The share of South Cairo Electricity Distribution Company amounts to approximately 1.3m metres, which will be installed in five districts in Cairo, namely 6^th of October City, Sheikh Zayed, Haram, Dokki, and Maadi.

A total of 1.7m metres will be installed in the areas of both the North Cairo Electricity Distribution Company and the Canal Company for Electricity Distribution. The 3m devices are set to be installed in two years.

The most important items in the tender specifications included the supplier’s commitment to conduct experiments proving the metre is able to be remotely readable during the examination and analysis, and to conduct an actual experiment on random samples of the devices.

The technical specifications of the metres include no power cuts in case all the credit has been used between 5pm and 10am of the next day, in addition to the official holidays, and Fridays.

The prepaid metres work with credit cards that look like a phone credit card, and can take on a minimum EGP 50, with no upper limit. If there is surplus on the user’s credit, the remaining money will roll over to be used in the next month.