The Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD) held a meeting with a number of smart electricity meter manufacturers and suppliers to discuss applying a comprehensive electricity metering system in the New Administrative Capital. Sources told Daily News Egypt that ACUD aims to launch a comprehensive installing system of electricity metres according to the highest international standards. The sources pointed out that the ACUD officials held discussions with representatives of electricity metre companies to discuss the best specifications for prepaid electricity metres in the new capital. The participating companies in the meeting were Globaltronics, El Sewedy Electrometer, Iskraemeco, El Maasara For Engineering Industries, ZTE Corporation, Huawei, Gama, Siemens, and Ericsson. The planned system will help consumers improve their energy management, reduce their consumption bills, provide the option of paying up front, increase the accuracy of metre reading, as well as reduce the period between metre reading and billing invoice. The comprehensive system also allows subscribers to monitor and ration their consumption. The metre displays all the data on the remaining balance (kW/h), such as the value of the amount in pounds, remaining days, the consumption segment, and the contractual capacity. The ministry of electricity has put a plan to install 20m smart electricity metres over the next 10 years as part of its strategy to eliminate metre reading errors and electricity theft. A number of companies have started supplying smart metres as part of the plan's first phase, reaching 250,000 metres. The total number of metres to be installed in Al-Obour and Nasr City is about 53,000 metres. A further 50,000 smart electricity metres will be installed in the 6th of October City and Sheikh Zayed City, and 39,000 others in downtown Alexandria and Borg El Arab area. Furthermore, 50,000 metres will be installed in the 10th of Ramadan City, 30,000 metres in in Tanta city, while the Upper Egypt Electricity Distribution Company will install 28,000 metres in Minya and Assiut.
