By December the committee formed by the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company and a subsidiary of the Armed Forces’ National Service Products Organisation (NSPO) will complete its analysis of offers by nine local and international companies for the tender that was launched by the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy to supply 250,000 smart electricity meters.
Sources at the Ministry of Electricity said that Electricity Holding Company officials completed analysing the financial offers of companies. The NSPO subsidiary was tasked by the Ministry of Electricity to conduct the consultancy of the tender and choose the winning company.
The sources pointed out that the list of companies bidding for the smart meters tender includes ZTE, Huawei, Ericsson, Alkan, Elsewedy Electric, Gama, and Siemens.
The sources added that the current tender aims to implement a trial project for the instalation of 250,000 smart meters divided among six companies for the distribution of electricity. North Cairo, South Cairo, and Canal companies for electricity distribution will have 50,000 smart meters each. Middle Egypt, South Delta, and Alexandria companies for electricity distribution will receive 25,000 smart meters.
The smart meters project aims to help the consumer improve their energy use, which would lead to reducing consumption costs. It would also enable advanced payment, increase the accuracy of taking consumption measurements, and decrease the time period between taking consumption measurements and issuing the bills.
The smart meters enable the subscribers to monitor and decrease consumption. The meters’ screens show the data of the remaining credit in kilowatt/hour, the value in Egyptian pounds, and the number of days left of their credit. In addition, users would be able to know their consumption segment upon which the amount of the bill is decided.
The Ministry of Electricity wants to install 20m smart electricity meters over the next 10 years, in the framework of its strategy to eliminate consumption measurement errors and electricity theft.
