Prepay Solutions: Extending Grid Modernization Benefits to the Consumer

With changing industry and consumer dynamics, the time is ripe to implement new technologies and solutions that benefit both the utility and consumer. Prepay electricity is an application that is finding adoption in the United States due to widespread deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), pervasive wireless technologies, and the consumer willingness to use technology to prepay for services, such as in prepaid cellular .

Prepay is able to improve customer service by increasing customer satisfaction ratings, decrease utility operational costs by eliminating the need to dispatch crew for meter disconnect and reconnects  and decrease bad debt write-off from unallocated bills. Today, prepaid solutions are easy to implement as they are offered either as a cloud-based managed service or on-premise solution.

Key takeaway points:

• Prepay reduces write-offs
• Utilities that use prepay report high customer satisfaction ratings
• Prepay programs are an easy way to implement an energy efficiency program