Doha: All new projects and buildings in the country will get smart electricity meters while all the old meters in buildings will be replaced with the smart ones in a phased manner, a senior official of the Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) has said.
Smart meters can digitally send metre readings to the energy supplier and ensure more accurate energy bills. They also help the customer better understand their energy usage.
“ So far we have completed the installation of over 15,000 smart meters, as part of our smart grid initiative. And now we are going to do it in a big scale to cover the whole country," Kahramaa's President Eng Essa Bin Hilal Al Kuwari said, on the sidelines of the GCC Power 2016 conference and exhibition which opened at the Doha Sheraton Hotel yesterday. Asked about a time frame, he said, “It will be implemented in a phased manner”.
Abdullah Al Diyab, head of the electricity network a Kahramaa said that the smart metre project is currently in the experimental phase.
"All new projects and buildings across the country will have smart meters, as part of a plan to replace or all the old meters with the new ones,” he told the media on the sidelines.
Addressing the conference earlier, Al Kuwari said that scientific studies and practices prove that energy efficiency is one of the cheapest energies and one of the largest energy sources in many countries due to its power saving and economic benefits.
"We endeavour to use the state of the art technology while adhering to energy conservation, executing smart grids, and increasing the operational capacity of generation plants," he added.
He said as part of Tarsheed, the ambitious Qatari initiative to rationalise consumption of water and electricity, Qatar will produce 200 to 500 MW of solar energy in phase one by 2020.
Tarsheed, launched in 2012 was able to reduce electricity consumption by 14 percent and water consumption by 15 percent by the end of last year, he added.
Three basic strategies were used to make this possible- introduction of new technologies, revision of water and electricity tariffs and raising public awareness about saving these precious resources. Ahmed bin Ali Al Ibrahim, head of GCC Power Grid said last year, it saved $390m in terms of operational costs and power disruptions. “We want to utilize the huge surplus in winter by storing it and exporting it to European countries, for use in heaters in harsh winter,” he added.
