10.60 lakh smart prepaid meters installed

Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB) has so far installed 10.60 lakh smart prepayment meters across the country with a view to reducing system loss, pilferage of power, overbilling and harassment of power consumers.

BREB is installing 50,000 more smart prepayment meters with its own finance increasing the total number of consumers under prepaid meter coverage to 11.10 lakh. The total number of consumers under BREB is 2.75 crore.

"We have installed 33 lakh prepaid meters so far out of the total 3.62 crore electricity consumers across the country," State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid told BSS here today.

He said the government will bring all consumers under smart pre-payment metering system aimed at reducing system loss, pilferage of electricity, over billing and harassment of subscribers.

He said Northern Electricity Supply Company (NESCO) Limited signed an agreement with a Chinese firm for manufacturing smart pre-payment meter in the country.

"The BREB is working for electricity supply to every corner of the country having grid facility by June 2020. The government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been working relentlessly to bring all citizens under power coverage and our generation capacity reached to 22,787 MW," Nasrul said.

He said as high as 96 percent people of the country are now getting electricity from 47 percent in 2009.

Highlighting the time-befitting directives of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to make the country self-reliant in power production, he said every upazila would come under hundred-percent electricity coverage by the Mujib Year in 2020.

According to the BREB, works for preparing a detail project pro-forma (DPP) for a project to install 31 lakh smart prepayment meters is underway, which will be sent soon to the Power Division for approval.

Besides, the state-owned rural electrification board has completed feasibility study for another project of setting up 50 lakh smart prepayment meters across the country under government to government (G to G) method.

The Power Division has taken the initiative through all distribution utilities to implement a prepayment metering system with a view to reducing non-technical losses, increasing the revenue collection and improving customer's service.

The Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has already installed 11,66,005 smart pre-paid meters out of the total 31,24,330 consumers across the country in December 2019 and a plan will be taken to procure and install 6,00,000 smart prepayment meters under its four distribution zones.