A significant portion of electricity meters operated by the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) are currently out of commission, creating billing challenges that have forced the agency to send estimated energy bills to thousands of impacted households and businesses across the island nation.
According to APUA’s Acting Chief Executive Officer Roger Tongue, between 10 and 15 percent of the authority’s full meter inventory is non-functional, making it impossible for field teams to collect accurate, real-time consumption readings from these devices.
“There are instances where meters fall out of service; they’re not working, and we cannot read them,” Tongue explained in a public statement addressing the ongoing issue. “In these cases, we have no alternative but to generate estimated bills for customers.”
To ensure estimates align as closely as possible with actual usage, APUA calculates provisional bills based on the customer’s historical energy consumption leading up to the point the meter stopped operating. “We pull data on your consumption before the meter went out of service, and we generate a monthly average from that historical data to build the estimate,” Tongue added.
The utility authority has already launched a sustained meter replacement initiative designed to locate faulty units and swap them out for functional devices as rapidly as possible. While the long-term goal of the programme is to collect accurate, physical readings for every active customer account, Tongue acknowledged that resolving the backlog of defective meters will take time, and the issue will persist in the near term.
To address customer concerns about overcharging, APUA has put in place a formal recourse process for users who believe their estimated bills are higher than their actual energy use. The authority is encouraging all customers with questions about provisional billing to reach out directly to its customer care department.
“Our team will review your individual consumption patterns, and if our estimate is found to be out of line with your actual use, we will adjust the bill accordingly,” Tongue confirmed. “No customer needs to worry about being stuck with an unfair overstated estimate—there is a clear process to resolve disputes.”