While many municipal metering programmes have achieved deployment targets, the question is whether these investments are delivering the operational, financial and governance benefits originally expected.
This is the focus of a recent webinar titled Maximising Smart Meter Returns (https://apo-opa.co/4vEOts8), brought to you by ESI Africa, part of VUKA Group, and featuring Carson Dean, founder of GridLens Energy; Sindi Shozi, Chief Engineer at eThekwini Municipality; and Hilton Smith, Chief Accountant for Water and Electricity Billing at Drakenstein Municipality.
The discussion explored how municipalities and utilities can unlock measurable outcomes, stronger revenue protection and greater operational confidence from their smart metering programmes.
“Successful programmes treat operational intelligence as a governance capability rather than an IT project,” says Dean.
From deployment to governance confidence
Opening the discussion with a presentation to frame the problem, Dean argued that globally many utilities have reached a point at which deployment activity and operational certainty are being conflated.
“The question this discussion addresses is not whether utilities should invest in smart metering. They should, and they currently are,” he said. “The real question is whether those investments are being transferred into verifiable governance-graded operational confidence.”
Dean explained that while utilities have access to growing volumes of operational data, many still struggle to verify whether corrective actions have genuinely resolved identified issues.
“Visibility is not the same as verification,” he said.
He noted that leading organisations are shifting their focus from simple anomaly detection to measurable outcome verification. According to Dean, successful programmes treat operational intelligence as a governance capability rather than an IT project.
“The transition that I want to describe is not a technology transition. It’s a governance transition,” he said.
Shozi reinforced this point from a municipal engineering perspective. She said one of the biggest mistakes utilities make is prioritising physical meter roll-outs before ensuring the supporting systems are ready.
“The success of the AMI depends less on the meter itself, but on the systems that have been put in place,” she said.
She emphasised the need to understand existing technical architecture before defining future-state environments and stressed the value of phased implementation.
“AMI is not about deploying a smart meter, but actually knowing the current architecture that is there, so that you can have a successful implementation.”
3 best practices highlighted by Shozi:
- stabilising billing, asset management and meter data systems before deployment,
- conducting detailed assessments of existing infrastructure and data flows, and
- avoiding vendor lock-in through interoperable, multi-vendor architectures.
Municipal metering data quality drives revenue assurance
From a financial management perspective, Smith said smart metering is transforming how municipalities manage revenue assurance and customer billing accuracy.
“Revenue assurance is based on three things. Firstly, it is the accuracy of the data. Secondly, data integrity. And thirdly, it is the completeness of the data,” he said.
By replacing manual meter reading with automated data collection, municipalities can significantly improve data accuracy while reducing human error.
“When people understand what they are paying for, then they are more likely to pay freely for it,” Smith explained.
He added that smart metering platforms provide both municipalities and customers with near real-time visibility into consumption patterns. This enables quicker decision-making and more proactive management of network and consumption challenges.
Dean noted that utilities often face an overwhelming number of alarms and exceptions. He advised organisations to prioritise interventions based on risk and impact.
“High-performing organisations prioritise alerts based on operational and financial impact rather than just alert volume alone,” he said.
He added that field resources should be allocated based on revenue exposure, customer impact, operational risk and confidence in the underlying data.
Leadership and customer trust remain essential
The panellists agreed that leadership commitment remains one of the most important success factors in any smart metering programme.
Smith described leadership as the catalyst for meaningful transformation.
“Leadership is much more than words,” he said. “Sometimes in government, we become experts at compliance and ticking a box, but the effectiveness of what we are doing doesn’t always measure up to what the expectation is.”
Shozi agreed, stressing that successful implementation requires coordination across engineering, finance, ICT and field operations.
“We are not supposed to be working in silos,” she said. “Clear leadership is very important.”
Customer engagement also emerged as a recurring theme throughout the discussion. Shozi said utilities must continuously communicate with customers to build trust and reduce resistance to new technologies.
Reducing non-technical losses requires more than technology, she said. “We need to move from reactive to more proactive operations, so that we can predict our network behaviours.”
Smith echoed the importance of transparency. “Do not assume that people want technology. Do not assume that people will automatically buy into your concept,” he said. “You actually need to go down to the level and to show them that this is what we are doing.”
In their closing remarks, the panellists returned to the importance of governance, organisational culture and long-term thinking.
Shozi described smart metering as “strategic utility transformation programmes” rather than technology projects.
Smith encouraged utilities to embrace digital transformation and rethink legacy processes. “Every kilowatt tells a story, and it is our job to collect that data and to make it into actionable decisions.”
Dean concluded that future success will depend on how well utilities can demonstrate accountability and measurable outcomes.
“The utility that would define this over the next decade is not necessarily the ones with the largest infrastructure footprint,” he said. “They are the ones that can stand in front of a board or community with confidence and with evidence.”
Access the recording for the full discussion: https://apo-opa.co/4vEOts8
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of VUKA Group.
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