TNB denies new meters lead to larger bills

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 6 — Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) said today that the installation of digital electricity meters was a routine replacement exercise, denying allegationsthat energy consumption had been hiked to increase the utility’s profits.

The power company added that contracts for the installation of new meters that were given to four vendors followed the utility’s procurement guidelines.

On Tuesday, PKR linked the family of former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawito a company that supplies the controversial digital electricity meters to TNB alleged to have hiked up energy consumption bills and gained the national utility company billions of ringgit in profit.

In its statement today, the national power company did not name the vendors awarded the meter installation contract or deny that any one of them was linked to the former PM’s family.

It said, however, that, figures cited by PKR was inaccurate and misleading.

According to PKR’s investment bureau chief Wong Chen, Noor Asiah Mahmood, who is the younger sister to Abdullah’s first wife, the late Tun Endon Mahmood, owns Ombata-Ambak Holdings Sdn Bhd, which has a 15 per cent share in Malaysian Intelligence Meters Sdn Bhd, the latter which is one of the companies contracted by TNB to supply the new digital meters.

Wong alleged on Tuesday that the programme to switch analogue power meters for digital ones had showed consumers would be contributing RM6.88 billion to TNB’s profit over the course of 10 years. The programme has been stopped temporarily on the orders of Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Peter Chin Fah Kui since October.

“Our research shows TNB has 8.03 million consumers now and the average price for each meter is RM250, therefore this programme had the potential to reach RM2 billion.

“For the financial year 2012, TNB’s revenue from all consumers is RM34.4 billion, if the electronic meter had given a conservative raise of two per cent, the additional burden on consumers would be as much as RM688 million a year.

“Seeing as the life expectancy of this meter is only 10 years, consumers would ultimately have to pay as much as RM6.88 billion to TNB for that duration,” Wong told a news conference on Tuesday.

PKR strategy director Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, who was also present at the press conference, said the issue was not a small matter as consumers would have to pay up to 50 per cent of the cost of their power bills.

Responding today, TNB said the electromechanical meter replacement programme for meters exceeding a life span more than 15 years was in line with global utility best practices.

“There is no intention to deliberately enhance TNB’s revenue from this exercise. Any difference in reading is a factor of meter degradation or consumption increase.

“For that reason, some customers perceived there was an increase in their electricity bills after meter replacements.”

Last October, Chin, the minister, said TNB had halted the replacement of analogue electricity meters with electronic meters until a standard operating procedure could be fixed.

He had made the decision after receiving public complaints saying power consumption had spiked after switching to the new digital meters, causing them to be also billed “retrospectively”.

“This operation will go on but our main task is to educate people on the new meter,” the minister had said then.

However, Chin had said replacing the analogue devices with the new meters would continue for households where the electricity meters were damaged or suspected to have been tampered with, resulting in losses.