Guinea Electricity Visits GEM
A six member delegation from Guinea Electricity Company and some selected officials of Electricity Company of Ghana made a familiarization tour of Ghana Electrometer’s (GEM) ultramodern state of the art metering facility in Accra. The tour was to enable them have first-hand information about GEM’s technical operations and deepen their knowledge on prepaid metering processes of GEM.
The delegation from Guinea Electricity Company sought to learn from Ghana’s successes and challenges and also adapt and adopt lessons from how Ghana has been able to successfully implement the prepaid metering system.
Briefing the delegation, Mr. Obed Solomon, Director of Operations and External Relations, expressed his optimism about the visit and said GEM considers the delegation as a major stakeholder in GEM’s bid to support and partner with Utilities in the West Africa sub region. He stressed that the visit is expected to create a technical and financial relationship between Ghana and Guinea in the areas of energy, metering and electricity distribution.
According to him, the visit will pave way for GEM who is a trailblazer of prepaid metering in Ghana to collaborate and cooperate with Guinea Electricity Company to take the agenda of utilities management a step further. “As a company we are ever ready to place our services at the disposal of any utility that wishes to partner us” he added.
Interacting during the tour, the delegation’s major concern about consumer’s ability to temper and by-pass power usage on prepaid meters were assuaged. They were informed about an anti-tampering facility which is a unique feature of the SMART-G meter. This feature informs the utility provider of an open cover, open terminal, high magnetic fields, reverse current and fault energy.
Conducting the delegation round the Facility, Technical Supervisor Mr. Haythem Abdallah Abdallah gave them an overview of the various stages of the assembling of a meter. He explained the phases included Assembly line phase, Calibration procedure, Programming, Testing phase and finally Packaging.
Prepaid meter provides an advantage to consumers as it grants them control over their electricity consumption, while making them avoid incurring high bills unknowingly. Prepaid meters offers consumers the luxury to monitor their consumption.
