Since 2014 when the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) introduced prepaid electricity to Jamaica, over 600 residential and small business customers have been enjoying savings of up to 40 per cent of the electricity costs they incurred when they had a regular postpaid meter.

Landlords and owners of rental properties no longer absorb the debts of their tenants. Community centres have successfully transferred the responsibility of electricity costs to the users of their facilities. Jamaicans who earn on an irregular basis can pay when they earn and importantly, customers with prepaid meters have seen reduced costs by simply taking control.

Today, customers in Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine, Clarendon, Manchester, St Elizabeth and St Thomas are enjoying the benefits of a metering system which allows them to purchase what they need by matching their consumption to their pockets.

So how does the system work? Each qualifying customer receives a meter and a Customer Interface Unit (CIU), with a keypad attached. Customers then purchase a prepaid electricity voucher of any value at Bill Express, or online at

myjpsco.com. The 20-digit voucher number must then be entered into the CIU keypad. The meter is immediately uploaded with the number of kilowatt-hours equivalent to the dollar value of the purchase.

Once this is done, customers can monitor their electricity use by calculating the kilowatt usage by the second, minute, hour or day. Importantly, customers on the prepaid system are protected, since the credit bought on each customer’s meter cannot be used on any other meter. Also, in the event that the prepaid voucher is lost, the voucher number can easily be retrieved from the text message sent to their phone, or from the notification e-mail they would have received, or from the JPS Customer Care Centre.

While prepaid metering has been working for individuals, the product has also been rolled out by the Community Renewal Division and customer service office, on a community basis, as part of the recently embraced social partnership strategy to get customers back on the grid. The first community to benefit from prepaid metering so far is McGregor Gardens, where there have been slow but positive results.

Prior to the engagement with Member of Parliament Julian Robinson, fewer than 10 residents in the community were paying JPS customers. Today, the partnership has seen close to 230 residents enjoying JPS prepaid metering, with close to 50 per cent of residents purchasing electricity credit monthly.

Following closely on McGregor Gardens, the JPS has started work to regularise nine other communities through social intervention and technical solutions. Prepaid metering is only one solution which encourages and increases affordability through energy management. House wiring, through partnership with the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, is another initiative designed to benefit high-needs communities under the Community Renewal Programme.

Outside of this programme, communities such as Boscobel in St Mary, Nannyville Gardens, Price Lane, and March Pen have, through their political representatives, engaged the JPS with requests for the installation of prepaid metering to regularise their communities and bring them back on the grid.

Keith Garvey, vice-president of customer services, with responsibility for community renewal, has responded by engaging the communities in discussions, supported with a review of individual cases in the communities — including a debt alleviation plan for potential and existing customers who switch to prepaid metering in order to get back their electricity supply.

So far, the 99 per cent prepaid customer retention rate and range of customers who have embraced prepaid electricity demonstrate that prepaid electricity is the ideal energy management solution for landlords, community centres and sports venues. It is also an excellent option for customers with income periods outside their JPS bill due dates, and generally anyone who wants to manage their electricity consumption.

The McGregor Gardens experience also shows that fighting losses and successfully increasing compliance can happen in the long run through a combination of social partnership, political support and through providing customers with a workable energy management solution.

Following on its initial success, JPS is preparing to go one step further with the launch of automated prepaid metering in the second half of 2016.

Cecile McCormack is special projects and logistics manager (prepaid electricity) at JPS