JAKARTA: The city administration wants to cut the electricity bill of public street lamps by working with state power monopoly PT PLN to install a metering device to ensure that what it pays is based on actual electricity usage.

Mauritz Napitupulu, head of the city’s energy and industry agency, said the city would be able to save up to Rp 72 billion (US$7.9 million), or 40 percent of the annual Rp 180 billion bill, after they finished installing the devices in 2011.

He said the city could use the savings to build street lamps in residential areas. “We previously used an [unclear] estimation to decide the amount to pay as we assumed that all lamps were switched on for 12 hours,” he said over the weekend.  

Mauritz said the metering device would not mistakenly count broken lamps.

“This year, we plan to install 500 devices. The remaining devices will be installed in 2011,” he said, adding that to date, the city had installed the device in 180 locations. — JP