What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Prepaid Electricity?

Read more

Eric Milhizer

·

Follow

4 min read

·

Dec 21,

--

If you are considering Prepaid Electricity, there are both advantages as well as disadvantages to this service. First off, there are quite a few advantages. If you have Prepaid Electricity, you are much more aware of how much you are paying each month, and you can decide when you would like to top up your balance. You also don&#;t have to worry about accumulating debt as you purchase energy because you will notice your running costs. You also won&#;t get monthly bills, but instead, you will always have a good idea of what your balance is because it is easy to read on your meter screen.

Prepayment meters make buying energy much more convenient and straightforward for your busy life. They often have what is known as an &#;Emergency Credit&#; facility which gives you a certain amount of extra credit to use in case you don&#;t have the funds to replenish your balance. This gives you more time to fill up your meter before you have your utilities shut off. They also offer a &#;Friendly Credit,&#; or a &#;no-disconnect&#; service that operates at specific hours to be without energy.

With this feature, you won&#;t run out of energy even if you have depleted your Emergency Credit or if it has not yet been activated. You can even use your convenient prepayment meter to pay any outstanding bills that you may have and your payments can be spread over a period of time so that you can easily work your payments into your budget and free of interest. You also will not have any credit checks or deposits, and anyone can join without any hassle. You don&#;t have to worry about deposits, credit checks, or have to go through approval processes.

As wonderful as Prepaid Electricity may sound it also comes with a few disadvantages. You may not always have access to the cheapest tariffs since prepayment meters are quite a bit more expensive to operate than other meters. It can also be inconvenient to top up your meter since you will normally do this at the local petrol station, or supermarket. If your prepayment meter is depleted and your supply gets turned off, you will need to access your meter directly in order to restore your supply which may be difficult for you to access. Your supply will also turn off if your prepayment meter runs out of funds outside of the normal &#;Friendly Credit&#; hours and you have already used all of your &#;Emergency Credit&#; or if it has not been activated. You will not be able to restore it until your meter is filled up again and your account is out of the red.

If the meter runs out of credit and your supply is turned off you may need to repay any &#;Emergency Credit&#; or &#;Friendly Credit&#; or any other debt that you may owe before you are able to have your meter turned on again. This means that you may need to add more than you normally would which could throw your budget out of whack. Your energy usage will always be higher in the winter months which will bring your weekly payments up. If you have opted to go with the &#;pay-as-you-go&#; payment plan, it could impact your daily as well as monthly budget. You could offset this by spreading out your payments more evenly throughout the year in order to build up your credit during the warmer months and when your bills are lower to help prepare for the colder months.

If you are planning on going on vacation or leaving for a few days you need to remember to charge your card or key and to credit your meter. If you don&#;t do this before you leave, your utilities may be turned off, and you could have appliances such as your fridge turned off and it could cost you hundreds of dollars worth of spoiled food.

Whether you decide to have prepaid electricity for your utilities or not, there are benefits to having one or the other. You just need to decide what is most important to you. If you utilize it correctly, pay-as-you-go billing is convenient and simpler than your useful contract plans. It also gives the opportunity to have more control over your budget, and it also makes it easier to work your utility bills into your budget since it does not fluctuate as much as if you didn&#;t go with this type of payment plan. You just need to remember to pay. The biggest downside to having a &#;normal&#; utility bill is that you never really know how much your bill will be and you will also have a much higher bill in the colder months and during the holiday season when your budget can be tighter.

Call our support team today at any of our convenient locations and get a free estimate.

888.764.

You can also contact us online by using our quick contact form.

The electricity meter is a instrument used for electric energy metering and billing. As technology rapidly increases and the information age expands, the market demand for the function of energy metershas increased, from a single metering function to communication,tariff, event alarm, load curve, load control, anti-tamper, prepayment, etc. The prepaid meter in the mode of paying first and then using electricity effectively solves the problem of charging difficulty, and has been widely used in the market.

Over time, the function of prepaid energy meters has become increasingly abundant, and it has developed into Smart prepaid meters. Yongtailong&#;s D STS standard prepaid meter is very popular in the African market.

Technical Parameters

Voltage: 230V

Current: 5(100) A

acrel Product Page

Frequency: 50Hz

Impulse constant: imp/kWh

Power consumption: <10VA/2W

Starting current: 40mA

Working temperature: -20&#;~70&#;

Limit working temperature: -30&#;~80&#;

Working humidity: <95%

Accuracy class: 1.0 for active energy, 2.0 for reactive energy

Standard: IEC-11:,IEC-21:,

IEC-21,IEC-41:

Features           

Communication

options like RS485 ,Wifine, G3 PLC and GPRS (support 4G communication, with fall back capability to 2G and 3G.) communication, protocol dlms/cosem&#;IEC &#;

Anti-tamper

Support load ground connection, bypass detection, open cover detection, influence of external magnetic field, abnormal voltage record, live&neutral wire metering.

Tariff

Divide into weekday timetable and weekend timetable, with 8 time period and 8 tariffs. Every timetable has a backup table for remote updating of backup timetable and configure the switching time. Meter will automatically switch the tariff table at the switching time.

Event

Open cover, magnetic field, load ground connection, reserve current, over-voltage, low-voltage, low-frequency, overload, power-fail, low remaining power, and token record.

Mode

Meter has 3 operation modes: STS token mode, currency prepaid mode and post-paid (traditional) mode, which can be switched.

And the currency mode can be divided into tariff mode and step price mode. Modes can be configured through communication.

Charge method

1. Enter the charging code via the keypad on the electrical surface board

2. Charging via communication

3. The prepaid meter can be equipped with indoor displays, and recharge via IHD;

The three recharge methods have high fault tolerance.

 

With the development of intelligence and IoT, prepaid meters application scenarios are More and more wide. Not only using to solve the problem of charging for residential users, but also for rental houses, storefront rooms, shopping malls, school dormitories, factory dormitories, etc. Prepaid meter can be easily managed with the prepaid system platform, the load control function is adopted to ensure the safety of power consumption.