PHL, Chinese, Australian investors getting into prepaid electricity

Investors from the Philippines, China, and Australia are getting into the business of pre-paid electricity after a pilot run of the service yielded positive results. They are the Filipino firms Xen Energy Systems Inc., Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., and Wireless Services Asia, as well as the Shanghai-based Julong Electric Power Co., and Australia’s Symstream. Julong Electric chairman Liu Qi Tao and Xen president and CEO Ariel dela Cruz raised their desire to go into prepaid electricity during a meeting Tuesday with Commissioner Gloria Victoria Yap-Taruc of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). In a statement Wednesday, Dela Cruz assured the ERC that the pilot run of their program, called the XESI Pre-paid Kuryentext, yielded positive results and high acceptance rates with at least 10 electric cooperatives. He added that Batangas Electric Cooperative 1 has filed with the ERC its first prepaid retail electricity service application – a first in the industry. Kuryentext offers a an electric consumption meter that can be reloaded from any location via text messaging, Dela Cruz said. He also said the system offers security safeguards such as user IDs and passwords. "The tracking of consumption in 30-minute intervals allows the consumer to make ‘demand side management’ decisions, i.e., he can start switching down consumption as his credit is diminished, leading to a more prudent use of electricity," the Xen CEO said. Real-time transaction tracking also leaves an audit trail that can be retrieved in cases of complaints or conflicts between utilities and consumers. The executives who visited the ERC urged the agency and industry stakeholders to form a committee that will take care of the balance between consumer and utility interests once the new retail and electricity supply systems have been installed. — PE/VS, GMA News