A novel electricity vending solution has landed Expertron, a company at The Innovation Hub in Pretoria, which is part of the Gauteng Goverment's Blue-IQ initiative, two SPII (the Support Programme for Industrial Innovation) awards from the Department of Trade and Industry.
Expertron Managing Director Dr Walter Smuts received the awards from Darkie Africa, the MEC of Economic Affairs in the North West Province, at the awards ceremony in Mmabatho on Friday, 3 November 2006.
Expertron was selected as one of the 10 finalists from among 113 entrants to attend the award ceremony in Mmabatho where it was named the winner of the Small Business category, as well as the winner of the prestigious Chairman's award for all categories.
This is the second award that Expertron has received for the Cell Power product. At the Africa Utility Week in Cape Town in May this year, it also received the Eskom-sponsored Prepayment Innovation Award.
Cell Power, developed by Expertron with SPII funding support, uses standard cellphones as payment terminals for selling prepaid electricity. Municipalities can now, without risk, use vendors from local communities who run their own businesses, to sell electricity to others in their community, as the vendors prepay for the electricity that they sell.
"Cell Power has been designed to offer a very low barrier of entry for vendors to start a business," says Smuts. Vendors register existing mobile phone numbers on the Cell Power server as a vending terminal. To sell electricity to a client, the vendor sends the transaction details via his cellphone to the Cell Power server, which checks that the vendor has sufficient prepaid funds and sends back an electricity voucher number. The client is given the number in exchange for cash and enters the number on the electricity meter keypad at home to load the purchased credit onto the meter.
The City of Tshwane Municipality has used the Cell Power system operationally since July 2005 by appointing and accepting payments from vendors. According to Dirk Pieterse, Chief Engineer, Electricity at the Tshwane Metro, who was instrumental in rolling out Cell Power: "This electricity vending solution has been very successful, not only in delivering service, but also in generating new jobs."
"During the first year of operation, close to 180 cellphones were registered as payment terminals on the system," says Smuts. The Tshwane Metro pays vendors a 5% commission. Its vendors have a combined turnover of between R2.5 million and R3 million per month, while some of the top vendors turnover about R125 000 per month, translating into a monthly income of about R5 500.
The Cell Power vendors make it possible for the municipality to have enough payment points close to people's homes, which is especially important in informal settlements and newly developed areas where there is a lack of infrastructure.
According to Smuts, part of the success of Cell Power lies in the fact that local people are appointed as vendors who create relationships of trust with clients as people most often buy from someone they have known for a long time.
Gavin Ehlers, Technical Director at Expertron, says as some municipalities now prefer to outsource the vending service to third-party vendors, Expetron has franchised the Cell Power business. Cell Power franchises are available to suitable entrepreneurs in those municipal areas where the third-party outsourced model is preferred.
Expertron provides the technology and technical support, while the franchisee operates the system. According to Ehlers, the success of using local people as vendors is repeated by using local entrepreneurs as tthird-party vending operators
For more information please visit www.expertron.co.za