Photo by: Duane Daws
City Power will continue installing smart meters across Johannesburg now that it has been cleared of allegations of corruption and fraud in the awarding of its smart meters tender, it said on Sunday.
In the past eight months it had installed 153 of the new electricity meters in Ferndale, next to Randburg, and 2 500 at large power users in Johannesburg, as part of a project business trial, general manager Sol Masolo said in a statement.
The business trial, which ends on Friday, would be followed by the installation of 50 000 smart meters by June, as part of the first phase of the roll-out, which would be completed by October 2015, he said.
City Power was hoping to install between 10 000 and 12 000 meters a month.
Masolo said smart meters could operate in either post- or pre-paid mode. They enabled the remote reading of exact electricity consumption in real time, and sent an alarm when power was lost or interrupted.
He said City Power had done a pre-installation audit in 50 suburbs, and community communication there would start soon.
Some of those suburbs were: Ferndale, Franklin Roosevelt Park, Langlaagte, Berario, Linden, Glenvista, Crown Gardens, Fairland, Sandringham, Brixton and Parkhurst.