Smart meters make it possible to log water and electricity consumption remotely.Five years after the roll out of the €70 million, problem-ridden project, only 88,000 smart meters are fully functional, this newspaper has learnt.
Designed by world-renowned company IBM, the devices make it possible to log water and electricity consumption remotely, without meter readers.
The project, which will pave the way for night tariffs, was originally set to be in operation by 2010 but has been repeatedly postponed due to technical problems, with the latest deadline being the end of next year.
An Energy Ministry spokeswoman told Times of Malta that, until March, the Water Services Corporation had installed 140,000 smart meters and Enemalta had installed 222,331 of the devices.
She pointed out that only 44,000 meters of the total installed had been activated. This meant that, in the vast majority of cases, meter reading was still being carried out manually rather than remotely.
She added that the emphasis of the Energy Ministry over the past six months was to continue with the smart meter roll out programme but also to activate the installed devices.
The spokeswoman explained that the roll out was being managed by a specialised team to address “the lack of coordination and planning” among the entities involved in the project, which also included ARMS Ltd with responsibility for the billing aspects.
The ministry said that, since March, the WSC installed an additional 38,580 smart meters and Enemalta 22,331.
“However the number of accounts being billed through smart meters for both electricity and water doubled from 44,000 in March to 88,000 in September,” the spokeswoman said.
The ministry has pledged to address the problem of late and irregular billing, one of the most common complaints since the advent of ARMS in 2009.
In its electoral manifesto, the Labour Party had pledged to introduce regular utility billing.
Preliminary investigations had revealed that about 60,000 accounts were not being billed.
These are technically referred to as ‘locked’ or ‘data cleansing’ accounts.
In the vast majority of cases, meter reading was still being carried out manually
From the data quality audit carried by ARMS it transpired that the causes ranged from simple errors with inputting data to substantially complicated technical issues.
The spokeswoman said that, following adequate training to ARMS personnel, the number of unbilled cases dropped by more than 21,000 since August.
Last week, The Sunday Times of Malta reported that about 3,500 smart meters of those installed so far had stopped recording consumption and Enemalta was in the process of recovering the lost money.