Paul Ofori operates an internet café and printing press in Ashaley Botwe, a suburb of the capital, Accra.
He ran out of power on a particular Saturday and could not buy with an app provided by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), because of system failures.
Ofori decided to find a way out and called an electrician in the neighborhood to re-connect him illegally, so he could work over the weekend and get the issue rectified on Monday.
To his surprise just when he was opening the office on Monday morning, Ofori told the B&FT that officers from the ECG office came with the office car, showing him a device that indicated that he had an illegal connection over the weekend.
Hitherto, such illegal connection activities were carried out without the knowledge of the power distributor but that is now a thing of the past.
The company has deployed an improved system of linking all its new smart meters with the national identification numbers of power consumers.
That means once a meter is tempered with the company gets a notification pops up at the office for a swift response.
Another residential client, Benjamin Kwodjo, indicated that when his meter was changed to the more sophisticated meters, he contacted his insider at the ECG for an illegal connection service.
But the officer indicated that, with the new meters, illegal connection is not possible because once tempered with it, the system will detect it.
This is an indication that even the bad officers within the ECG who usually take money from clients to connect them illegally for selfish personal interest might be out of business.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in a new breath to tackle power theft, introduced this new metering system, leveraging the country’s national identification system to link customers’ identities to its database system for easy access.
Apart from linking national identification numbers of power consumers, the company will also leverage on residential address systems for easy tracking and consumption monitoring, which is expected to mitigate revenue collection shortfalls.
The Ghana Card and the Ghana Postal Addressing System (Ghana Post GPS) are the basic infrastructure on which the new system is expected to thrive.
The initiative dubbed the Loss Reduction Project (LRP) involves the installation of advanced smart prepaid meters equipped with sophisticated features to detect and prevent illegal tampering.
As part of the project introduced in 2023, old postpaid and prepaid meters are being replaced with new smart prepaid meters, designed to tackle illegal power consumption and reduce revenue losses.
The new meters also help with improved digital payment features via the company’s app. In the Greater Accra region, over 250,000 Nurri and other obsolete meters including postpaid have been replaced.
A Technician at the ECG Legon Meter Office, Adjei Asiwome, elaborated that some of the prepaid meters introduced by the power company when it started the prepaid and digital payment system are quite slow in reflecting subscriptions when clients purchase power, therefore one of the key features of the new meters is to also fast track the rate of response to power purchase for clients.
“Some of our old meters are not smart enough and therefore allow clients to perform by-pass easily without detection and get away with it. But with the new smart ones we are introducing, once you temper with it, we get a fraud alert notification in our system and follow up,” he said.
ECG Revenue Losses
In February 2020, when the former Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia launched the ECG’s mobile app, he mentioned that the power distributor records an average revenue loss of about 25 percent annually, equivalent to US$418.2 million.
The company’s financial report for the end of the year 2023, indicated that system losses for 2022 and 2023 were 28.41 percent and 27.17 percent respectively.
Former Managing Director of ECG, Samuel Dubik Mahama, in September last year, indicated that the company has had over 30 percent increment in its revenue since the inception of the (LRP).
With these new prepaid meters linked with Ghana Card, mobile phone numbers and GPS, revenue losses are expected to be reduced to below 20 percent by the end of year 2025.
Leveraging on digital solutions
The nation’s investment in digital public infrastructure (DPI) such as the establishment of the National Identification System database giving birth to the Ghana Card and the Ghana Postal Addressing System (Ghana Post GPS), has made it easier for service providers like the ECG to identify customers location, consumption levels and revenue leakages or power theft.
The Ghana Card has provided a unique identification number to every citizen, which can be used across various services. It has been linked to banking and other financial services, health insurance systems, and SIM cards.
Similarly, the digital address system assigns a unique digital address to every location in the country. This has helped utility providers obtain accurate location data, and enhance billing and revenue collection to reduce power theft.
Integrating these systems has significantly reduced losses for utility providers by improving accuracy, reducing fraud, and enhancing overall efficiency.
The main power utility services provider, ECG, is leveraging this infrastructure to reduce fraud and ensure that only legitimate users access services, thereby reducing losses due to fraudulent activities.
With a boost in data due to this digital development, the ECG is also planning better to allocate resources such as transformers to areas with population outstripping capacity.
With ECG still recording huge revenue losses there is more room for improvement, but irrespective of the initiatives to be implemented, digital payments and leveraging technology will play key role. Hence the ECG must continually invest in digitalization.
