Moldova-based smart metering company ADD Grup is to supply more than 250,000 smart meters for Electricité du Liban (EDL) in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, after a cooperation process that started in 2016.

ADD is working with its partner from Lebanon – ACC-K&A JV, KVA SAL, the electricity distribution service provider.

The project was first launched in 2011 and has been postponed several times, in particular due to the specifics of the Lebanese power grid and the necessity to define a data transmission technology, data model, and interfaces between DCU and HES to make it unified for all vendors and distribution services providers.

This project aims to assist EDL in the reduction of technical and non-technical losses and improve the collection revenue especially when coupled with the EDL AMI centre, which is still a project to be awarded by EDL.

As result, Prime technology was chosen and a T5-based data model was developed, taking into account all the individual nuances of the Lebanese power grid.

Finally, in November 2020, the scheme passed the smart meter certification procedure and, accordingly, the utility validation stage with the completed KPI for data collection.

Despite the quarantine due to the pandemic, as well as the tragic incident that occurred in the port of Beirut in August 2020, the Lebanese authorities intend to make up for lost time to develop and improve infrastructure.

Despite the difficulties and peculiarities of the Lebanese network – mainly caused by the non-uniform distribution of customers and load across the relatively small country – early this year it will launch the next stages of the project and supply 1% to 10% of the smart meters needed with the target to finalise the whole volume in mid 2022.