DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE ELECTRICITY PAYMENT AND METERING SYSTEM WITH PAYMENT INTEGRATION, EMAILING AND SMS [A CASE STUDY OF HARCOURT ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY]

The Nigerian power sector is confronted with inadequate, poor, un-organized electricity billing and consumer relations management. Electricity Tariff charges and collection has been a major chalenge in some community in Nigeria even with the adoption of prepaid billing meters. The procedure of installment and payment is cumbersome and distressing as electricity consumers need to proceed to banks to make payments and then take tellers to power control utility offices to affirm their power payment before they can energize their cards. 

The significant motivation of this research is to design and implement a convenient, cashless, automated and transparent electricity metering, billing and payment system. This research combines the power of the internet to make power meters communicate with SMS and E-mails network. This proposed system when fully implemented, will allow electricity consumers to remotely recharge and pay their electricity bil s from their mobile phones and laptops seamlessly. 

The implementation of the Online Electricity Payment and Metering System for Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company wil help improve accountability, organize and ease payment for electricity in Nigeria. The proposed system was developed using the HTML & CSS, and the PHP and mySQL programming language