Bitou beefs up revenue protection
Bitou Municipality is reaping the benefits of recent revenue protection training. During 2017/18, the municipality’s electrical technical and non-technical losses stood at 13.16%, i.e above national energy regular NERSAs acceptable technical and non-technical losses marker of 12%.
By 2018/19 though, Bitou s energy losses had been reduced to 9.55% – a saving of R3.697,192 that moved this Category B municipality into best-performing utility benchmark territory.
Among the challenges identified as contributing to the municipality s losses were: a chaotic approach to revenue protection, no meter management system, no effective working relations between finance department and electricity, meters not registered after hours, no seals system in place, illegal connections, tampering, incorrect meter readings. and access to credit meters.
Actions taken to reduce losses included setting up a free two-day basic revenue protection training course with Rens Bindeman as a facilitator. Neighbouring municipalities were also invited to participate in the training.
Following the training, a task team was established to work on reducing losses. The team included representatives from water, electricity, IT and finance, which helped to strengthen relations between the departments.
Despite having limited resources, a revenue protection section with effective controls was set up and audits carried out. Tampered and bypassed meters were replaced with split meters, illegal connections were removed. and penalties issued.
Bitou Municipality is preparing for 2020 by arranging follow-up revenue protection training. They will be increasing the frequency of their zero and low consumption reports and will set up a hotline for reporting illegal connections.
They aim to convert credit meters to smart meters along with AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) and intend moving the meters outside. They have run an AM R (automated meter readings) pilot and are now ready to draw up specifications for the AMR installation.
The municipality also intends installing meters in 21 of their 70 pump stations.
This report was compiled from excerpts of a Bitou local Municipality case study entitled ‘Converting Knowledge into Practice’ by Electrical department senior manager Jemaine Cupido.