The government is set to invest some e70 million in an overhaul of the water and electricity metering and billing system, aiming to become the first country in the world to implement a holistic power line data transfer system.

The companies involved in the setting up of the system are two world giants – IBM and SAP. The details, which are very technical in nature, were announced to the media last week.

Unfortunately, as happens every time, the details of the conference got lost in translation with the experts giving a very technically detailed analysis of what is to be implemented over the next three to five years.

In essence, Enemalta and Water Services corporations will be integrating their billing systems and customer care centre through centralised data collection. And this is where the clever bit comes in. A new meter, which essentially has an on-board modem, will be installed in place of the older meter at no charge. At the same time, a probe will be inserted into the water meter which will give it a sort of ‘wi-fi’ capability. This means that the intelligent meters will be able to calculate exactly what a household is consuming in terms of water and electricity in real time.

The data is then beamed back through the power lines to a semi-central terminal, which then wires the data back to the headquarters where it is collated and put online. Consumers will have the ability to enter a web portal and see what they are consuming. In other words, you can leave two lights on and see what you are using and you may then turn one off and see the difference in your consumption. This is the major benefit as people will be able to regulate their own consumption behaviour and might even get, pardon the pun, some shock treatment when they see the difference between, for example leaving all the lights on and being prudent.

There are other benefits for consumers. One of the most annoying things for utility consumers is trying to make a “find out” call at the relevant customer care centres. The data is not centralised and Water Services and Enemalta rarely have up-to-date figures. This will all be a thing of the past once the new integrated customer care centre is set up.

Another obvious advantage is that the setting up of the new system should lead to less abuse, or at least the successful tracing of people who tamper with meters. The system will act as a circuit breaker. In older mechanical systems, the authorities would not really know if a person tried to bypass a meter, or slow it down. With the new meters, as soon as the circuit is broken, the authorities would know it immediately and would then have to establish whether it was down to a simple power cut or whether it is systematic abuse. This, again, should be easy enough to establish because if it is a genuine case, consumption levels would return to a normal pattern once power is restored.

Another important aspect of the new system is the possibility of differentiated tariffs during the day and at night. At present, to do so, one would need an expensive dual mechanical meter system and Enemalta must manually switch supply from one account to another to do so. With the new system, it allows the power supplier “the opportunity to do so”.

Investment Minister Austin Gatt has gone on record saying that this does not mean that differentiated tariffs will be brought in, but at least there is the opportunity of doing so. We hope that the minister is not playing with words. To say that the opportunity is there is far cry from actually acting on the matter. If Enemalta truly wants to spread its supply burden over 24 hours then differentiated tariffs must be the way ahead.

Simple lip service and telling people how advanced the system will be is a case of hot air – action is needed. It’s useless having a Ferrari as a taxi and telling customers it can go from 0 to 60 in less than six seconds. If you tell people it can be done, then it’s very simple: just do it.