The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) has recently released a detailed guide on the integration of embedded generation and wheeling in municipal electricity billing systems. Notably featured in this guide is the fruitful collaboration between George Municipality and Open Access Energy, signifying a major progression in South Africa’s energy landscape. The guide, produced in collaboration with Sustainable Energy Africa, presents a comprehensive overview and valuable insights into this emerging sector.
According to the published guide, George Municipality faced substantial challenges with its existing metering data management system when it planned to introduce wheeling between municipal clients. The system struggled to process the detailed and frequent data required for sophisticated wheeling transactions, and limited the ability for municipal employees and wheelers to effectively allocate wheeled time-of-use (TOU) electricity.
Open Access Energy’s Amptera software emerged as the solution to these challenges. Amptera helped George Municipality to overcome the complexities of wheeling transactions. The software provides comprehensive AMR functionality, allowing for the reading of smart meters, storage of meter data, and access for both the municipality and bulk meter customers to this data. Amptera enables TOU reconciliation, data aggregation and evaluation. These are crucial for real-time billing information calculation in order to streamline energy management and billing processes.
Gerjo Hoffman, CEO of Open Access Energy, said: “Amptera has revolutionised the wheeling process by enabling access to billable smart meter data in real time, thus allowing wheelers to accurately allocate energy without the risk of overallocation and potential losses. Furthermore, it ensures that allocations are credited to the customer’s account immediately in the month of wheeling, significantly mitigating any credit risk to the wheeler. This is a game-changer in the energy sector, providing a reliable and efficient solution for contemporary energy distribution challenges.”
Established in 2021, Open Access Energy is South Africa’s first multilateral wheeling software platform. Alongside Amptera, they offer EnergyPro – a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution aimed at independent power producers (IPPs) and energy traders, assisting wheelers in distributing energy to multiple customers.
This initiative by George Municipality and Open Access Energy exemplifies a significant step forward in South Africa’s journey towards more adaptable and efficient energy distribution, demonstrating the potential of innovative technology in addressing complex challenges in the energy sector.
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