Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has launched an online payment system letting consumers read the electricity meter, input the reading, and hence pay bills, amid ongoing nationwide shutdown. Basically, consumers can register to the online system, enter their current meter reading, and finally pay the bill using payment gateways such as eSewa, Khalti, IME Pay, etc.
It has launched the payment system in 60 distribution centers, including Kathmandu, Pokhara, Biratnagar, and Butwal, etc, while will gradually roll across all 199 distribution centers in coming days. Since April, NEA reportedly discontinued sending its staff to people’s homes for the meter reading purpose.
Mr. Kulman Ghising, the Executive Director at Nepal Electricity Authority, on the launch of the online payment system said, “NEA has provided the facility to its consumers to read the meter themselves and pay it online when NEA meter readers are absent due to the Corona epidemic. For now, we have expanded the online service so that you can pay by meter reading online.”
Similarly, the Head of the Computerized Billing and Networking Division at NEA, Mr. Sujan Kumar Shrestha stated, “NEA’s industrial and business class customers who have connected three-phase (TOD) meter will also be able to use the system. More than 3 million home-based customers can benefit from this online facility.”
How does the NEA online payment meter reading system work?
- Sign up for the user registration via www.consumer.nea.org.np and provide details including name, email, mobile number, and password. Also, NEA doesn’t want you to be a meter holder for registration.
- On the NEA homepage, login using the mobile number and the password in order to move to the ‘consumer registration form.’
- Toggle on ‘Add Consumer’ to add one or more consumer(s) and choose a distribution center to enter DCS Name, Consumer ID, and Consumer Number for submission. (Note: a single user can read and input multiple meters readings separately). Then, tap on the ‘CLICK’ button to move to the ‘Meter Reading Entry Form.’
- Choose the ‘current year month’ and enter your current meter reading (numbers only) for submission. You can even upload an image of the meter(s) in JPG format with a max 5MB size.
NEA will send you a confirmation if in case the reading counts less than the past ones. It updates each reading in ‘meter reading’ for the respective consumers. Similarly, if it suspects any reading error, it will contact you by 4 PM on the same day, asking you to resend the latest meter image for verification.
NEA consumers can contact the billing division for further assistance. NEA also signs up its consumers to their respective distribution centers if required.
