Today, the current trend of energy industry development almost in all countries of the former Soviet Union as in Uzbekistan is characterized by the progressive increase of household sector’s share in the structure of total energy consumption. According to the experts, in the beginning of 1990s the population consumed about 8-12% of total energy supplied, but recently the share of energy consumed by the retail sector has been increased up to 15-25%.
Naturally, the need for rational and effective energy use provision, strengthening of payment discipline and improvement of payment mechanism for the consumed electric energy, as well as for realization of energy saving measures has become a major strategic priority in the activities of regional energy enterprises (PTES) of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
According to analysts, the main negative factors of development of retail sector of energy market, inherent almost in all countries of the former Soviet Union, and at the same time – reserve for improvement of the situation are system energy losses and low collection rates, which in the last decade have a steady growth trend. These losses are, primarily, due to the fact that for a long time the self-service system, not appropriate to time and requirements is applied as the major and, in fact, single form of payments for energy consumed by the users of household sector, where the consumers take the meter readings by themselves, fill the payment document and make the payment.
It is difficult to challenge the fact that number of electricity end-users in almost 32 million Uzbekistan is very significant – almost half of consumers in the Central Asia. The system of “independent” electricity metering widely used by PTES inherently leads to not accurate and ineffective collection, processing and analysis of large number of primary data, respectively, having a negative impact on the efficiency of power distribution companies. Furthermore, we can not exclude the human factor (mechanical error) in the correctness of taking the meter readings and filling the payment documents. The losses in transmission, measurement errors, and unfortunately, frequent practice of ‘falsification’ of measurement devices, i.e. so-called commercial losses of electricity, according to various calculations 25%, also can not be overlooked. Therefore, in order to identify any differences between the supply and payment, the metering system applied requires an individual ‘physical’ attention of the inspectors to each meter.
This once again confirms that the problem can not be solved only by the extensive build-up of power of generated electricity with realization of old organizational measures and without modern technical devices for measurement of electricity consumed.
As world practice shows the most important way of reducing the commercial losses and increasing the efficiency is the introduction of advanced electricity metering system (AEM). In fact, AEM aimed to provide the accurate billing and operational control of energy consumption, allows automating the cycle:
* electricity metering with a high accuracy, by using the appropriate technical devices of high accuracy class – electronic meters, current and voltage transformers
* data collection and storage of consumed electricity;
* maintenance of single system time with the possibility of adjustments;
* transferring of data to other information levels – server database of both object of metering and power distribution companies and republican data centers, by using a variety of channels and medium for data transfer,
while analyzing and identifying the calculations in organization, the opportunities for savings and helping to develop the measures on cost reduction.
Implementation of AEM with full cover of all consumers allows almost completely exclude this component of commercial losses such as measurement errors, significantly reduces the fraud, and, finally, decrease number of non-payments by means of billing technology appliance (billing).
Considering the abovementioned and in order to ensure the rational and effective use of electricity, strengthening of payment discipline and improvement of payment mechanism for consumed electricity The Cabinet of Ministry of the Republic of Uzbekistan established the resolution No. 295 “On additional measures for improvement of Uzbekenergo’s activities and strengthening the calculation discipline for energy consumed” on November 1, 2013.
Now, in the light of this resolution, JSC Uzbekenergo progressively realizes in Uzbekistan a large-scale program for implementation of advanced electricity metering systems (AEM) in the amount of more than 800 million US dollars, that is carried out with the involvement of number of loans from international financial organizations. In particular, by the credit funds of Asian, World and Islamic Development Banks, JSC Uzbekenergo plans to install throughout the country about 6 million meters, as well as to create a single billing system, proper communication system and data base of consumers. As reported by News of Uzbekistan the project for implementation of AEM in all regions and Tashkent city will be realized till the end of 2021 in four stages.
Regarding the effectiveness of undertaken actions, we can present the interim results of the first pilot project for introduction of AEM, which implemented by SJC Uzbekenergo in Bektemir district of Tashkent region. Thus, the implementation of AEM with the integration of more than 10 thousand consumers into it allowed to increase the daily fee payments almost for 3 times. The quantity of consumers who does not pay for electricity and the transmission losses were reduced by more than 4 times. Also, there were cases of operative identification of attempts of unauthorized connection to the networks and manipulation of meters.
The latest installed meters approved by Uzstandart besides the direct electricity metering have the functions of automatic meter reading by the data center, multi-tariff metering, quality control of energy, protection from fraud and remote disconnection when the permissible load is exceeded or not paid.
After realization of all four phases the works on implementation of AEM will be completed in all regions of the country. The plan for future – the integration of all consumers of the republic into the single billing center, which will allow to control payment systems more effectively, monitor the balance of electricity production and consumption.
According to experts, implementation of AEM project will enable to reduce the role of human factor in the collection of electricity readings, to obtain the reliable information on structure and level of consumption of main consumers, to improve the customer service system by increasing the reliability of networks and quality of electricity.
As a rule, the organization and implementation of AEM systems, including, the design and construction of specialized facilities and production of engineering equipment must meet the stringent specific requirements. Accordingly, in order to obtain the certificate of compliance of the construction of facilities and installation of highly-accurate equipment to all technical and economic requirements, the client is needed in complex services of specialized companies for consulting, technical supervision and inspection with advanced theoretical knowledge and practical experience in the inspection of design process, implementation and commissioning of advanced electricity metering systems and associated infrastructure.
Nowadays, only a small number of organizations in the Republic of Uzbekistan can provide such services. And, the company True Engineering Supervision Ltd. (TES) is one of them.
True Engineering Supervision Ltd. is a multi-industry engineering and consulting company, which provides the highly qualified services to the clients of the former Soviet Union for development and reorganization, construction and modernization of structures and objects of various industries. The company has an international experience of many years in the implementation of projects in such spheres as infrastructure development, business processes and human resources management and engineering.
The undisputable privilege of TES is that the company has positioned itself as a supplier of high-quality services for technical supervision and construction expertise, which based on a comprehensive implementation of investment projects for construction of objects of industrial and commercial property, the application of innovative technologies, quality management of construction investment projects on the basis of international best practices.
The experts of True Engineering Supervision are professionals, their qualification increases constantly both theoretically and practically, and covers such areas as civil construction, petroleum production and refining, water supply and sanitation, agriculture and irrigation, communications, utilities and others. The experts of TES clearly know and skillfully use in practice the rules and regulations of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC), Construction regulations of the Republic of Uzbekistan (KMK and SHNK), the Standards of the Republic of Uzbekistan (RST Uz, GOST) and other regulatory acts in the field of construction.
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