A total of 350 smart meters have been installed for the Electric Power Corporation's (E.P.C.) commercial consumers.

This was revealed by the Corporation's General Manager, Tologata Tile Tuimaleali'ifano, who said they are also looking at domestic consumers.

The Electricity Power Corporation's $4.1 million tala (US$1.6 million) Smart Meter Project allows consumers to simply swipe their cards to recharge their cash power.

There will no longer be a need for the customer to wait for a receipt providing a voucher number to punch in their cash power meters.

"Right now we have completed installing all smart meters for our large consumers, a total of 350," he said.

"We can also now monitor and read the usage of these large consumers from our office."

The installation of smart meters for smaller customers, referred to as "domestic customers" will start some time next month, said the Corporation's G.M.

"A total of 1650 first batch of domestic consumer meters will be used to start rolling out the smart meter programme," said Tologata.

"The meters have already arrived, and we are looking at installing them very soon.

"We are to schedule our teams to see when they can go out and install these smart meters."

Tologata told Samoa Observer that the whole programme will take three years to roll out, as it will depend on the finances of the organisation.

“Because we cannot achieve this entire $US1.6 million in one year,” he said.

“This is all part of upgrading and providing top notch service in a [simple] process when purchasing cash power."

“The new smart meter system is a two way communication; the system can communicate directly to the consumer’s smart meter."