More Meralco customers seen going prepaid

Manila Electric Co. is set to activate 10,000 prepaid electricity accounts by the end of July as it builds momentum for the new service.

Of the target, 8,017 customers have already been activated, according to Meralco SVP Alfredo S. Panlilio. He said there were 25,000 applications being processed for the Prepaid Retail Electric Service (PRES) as of July 26.

Meralco chair Manuel V. Pangilinan said that based on company studies, customers were “very happy” with the PRES.

Meralco observed that the first 8,000 customers were loading four to five times a month. Fifty percent of them reload in the denomination of P100,” said Panlilio, adding that 70 percent of the load transaction was done through e-load via their mobile phones.

The service is initially available in parts of Manila, Cainta, Quezon City, San Juan, Caloocan, Pasig and Cavite. The Meralco franchise area covers all of Metro Manila plus Bulacan, Cavite and Rizal, as well as parts of Batangas, Laguna, Quezon and Pampanga.

Meralco has a regulatory permission to activate 40,000 prepaid electricity meters.

Meralco has pending applications for another 100,000 meters. These are pending with the Energy Regulatory Commission.

PRES is being commercially phased-in on voluntary basis. Meralco customers may avail themselves of the service by applying at any Meralco business centers.

Once a Meralco client is approved for PRES, the customer must pay an initial consumable prepaid electricity load of P200. Top-ups may be in denominations of P100, P200, P300, P500 and P1,000.

Under the service, Meralco sends the customer top-up confirmation, daily updates on consumption and prepaid load amount, and alerts through the client’s mobile phone.

Meralco said the PRES system would send a warning SMS three days before the customer uses up his/her remaining load.

Under rules, customers can try the new service for six months before completely shifting to prepaid electricity or reverting to the usual postpaid setup.

In 2012, Meralco allotted $7 million for PRES deployment, including technical and commercial tests and the commercial rollout for the 40,000 meters.

It tapped General Electric Co. as the system integrator for the advanced metering structure of the service; Orga Systems for billing operations, and Ecologic Analytics for the meter data-management system.