EDZ: Electricité de Zahlé

The concept behind prepayment meters is simple - instead of paying after you have used your electricity, you pay before you use it.

Prepayment meters are usually installed by the electricity suppliers if the customer can not keep up payments on their energy bill. However, they can also be requested by the customer themselves - and are often seen as a good method of budgeting.

EDZ installed a prepayment electricity system in June 2005. The project main objectives is to test the system efficiency and viability in Lebanon.

System Description and Operation

The system is distinguished by a full closed loop interoperation between its components. The customer buys energy, receives a token, enters the token into his meter and the actual consumption of the meter is fed back to the server station through the hand held unit that reads the meter and transfer the data back to the server to complete the loop.

The system main functions are:

Data is centralized into the server and shared online with the vending stations.
Purchase is made at the vending stations. The generated token is encrypted and can only be entered into the buying customer’s own meter.
The meter is specially designed with a keypad interface. When charged, the entered token is decrypted and the units bought add up to the existing amount in the meter.
Meters data collection is processed remotely through the HHU to be transferred to the server station.
A reconciliation procedure is then initiated for every customer at the end of each month.

System Benefits

The implementation of a prepayment electricity system would provide the following benefits:

Cancellation of post payment, bill collection, late payments and disconnections processing.
Meter tampering detection at the customer level.

Systems and Technologies

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Electricity Prepayment