Paying monthly energy bills is the only time many customers really interact with their utility. While some people complain of receiving higher utility bills due to meter errors, others complain of overlapping bill periods, wrong supplier estimations, and even a mistake in invoice calculation and estimated billing. We have all been stressed out at some point in our lives, whether it was because our utility bill was much higher than we expected or because we couldn’t pay on time due to our hectic schedules. Security issues are also of prime importance to the utility supplier and the consumer.
Critical to the successful operation of any payment system are the issues of security interoperability of equipment supplied by different manufacturers. Users have long struggled with various systems that perform the same or similar functions but are not compatible with each other. Residential ethnographic research shows that customers want a simple bill and stress-free payment method with useful usage information.
As part of efforts to mitigate these challenges and offer a stress-free solution to energy customers, MOJEC International Ltd., an ace meter manufacturing company in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, and a trailblazer in the power generation industry pioneered what is known as “Power Genie,” a premium vending power solution for highbrow residential buildings and local communities in Nigeria.
MOJEC Power Genie is a 24/7, affordable estate management vending power solution with the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) protocol-enabled token generation mechanism that allows IPPs and Estate Facility Managers to effectively manage prepaid electricity and other utilities. It is a seamless and secured message system for carrying information between a point-of-sale and a meter. Currently, MOJEC Power Genie is deployed across over 25 estates, institutions, hotels and off-grid projects.
MOJEC Power Genie was designed for use by both the utilities and the customer, it helps utilities seamlessly collect revenue and provide customers with ease of Energy top-up. The platform is not limited to this functionality alone. Combined with the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) it also helps property managers protect revenue by monitoring energy theft remotely with MOJEC Smart meters.
According to the group managing director of MOJEC International, Chantelle Abdul, “our Advance Metering Infrastructure (Energy Management Solution) is top-notch, and is currently hosting about 800,000 smart meters, giving room for Electricity Distribution Companies to carry out Meter Management, Tariff Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Collections, and Report Generation. “Over time, our system has helped utilities make intelligent decisions in the management of power supply and demand for electricity from customers.
Speaking further on how the Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMI) helped Power Genie to operate seamlessly, Wole Solanke, Head IT, MOJEC International explained that “the AMI/AMR system is future-proof with options to deploy on both traditional servers and private or public cloud solutions, a fully customizable data analysis and reporting engine to realize the potential of “Big Data,” a web-based application with no need to install or update a client, support for multiple database management systems, and a single data store that contains all information.”
One major functionality of the PowerGenie application is the auto token recharge functionality as well as Load control functionalities where customers who tamper with their meters are disconnected remotely without getting to the premises. MOJEC Power Genie is secure as it tackles the problems of financial records, fraudulent token generation, re-use, and credit transfer, as well as the management of customers and their meters.
The AMI/AMR System is used to monitor and manage MOJEC smart meters with third-party DLMS/COSEM compliant meters. This system makes it possible to monitor and remotely query aggregate total consumption, losses, and any other information from the meter.
The AMI/AMR system has an automated fail-over and network-balanced cluster for high availability and auto-recovery from disasters. It has a proven track record of high reliability and low to zero maintenance in a distributed system at the service and database level to ensure scalability, with a service-oriented architecture to allow easy customization and third-party integration.
Mr. Solanke further stated “MOJEC International considers revenue generation very important, and our Energy Management System (EMS) provides multiple channels of payment. This increases the customer’s convenience in making payments and enables payments to be made round the clock, 24/7, from any part of the world. Estate administrators can view all transactions on the dashboard and spool data by time, customer name, meter number, date/time, transaction reference, etc. “
The Power Genie is a good and important tool for financial reporting to accountants and financial analysts. With Power Genie, all that is needed is a mobile phone, it combines different payment channels which ranges from USSD, Bank transfer, Card payment and POS option. It is seamless and available 247.