Power Meter Technics · established 1994
PMT began by refurbishing worn electromechanical meters until they measured accurately again. Thirty years later we build the instruments, write the software, and run the accredited laboratory — but it is still the same question underneath: can you trust this number, and can you prove it?
1994
Established
Utility metering, exclusively
100
People
Engineers, technicians, analysts
3
Offices
Midrand, Cape Town, Durban
2
Owners
Both still in the business
1994
PMT was started by three people from Cullinan Engineering who saw an opportunity in refurbishing electromechanical meters. Not software, not smart metering — taking worn instruments and making them accurate again. Everything since has been a variation on that same question: can you trust this number?
1996
Graeme Mellis joined from Eskom, where he had been senior metering engineer in the Transmission Group. His first act was to get the laboratory accredited — by NCS, as SANAS was then called. Thirty years later that accreditation is still current, at issue 18 of its scope, and he is still a named technical signatory on it.
1996–2015
PMT designed its own meter test equipment: the current and voltage amplifiers, a reference standard, and the software to adjust and calibrate against it. It sold into South Africa, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Australia, and was the company's core business for the better part of twenty years. We stopped around 2015, when the market had saturated.
1998
Meters of that generation had no communications worth the name, so PMT built RTUs that counted pulses. Primitive, and it worked. The same year, Meteringonline went into service — the first fully automated meter reading and billing system for a commercial property in South Africa.
Early 2000s
Selling software and hardware turned out to be unprofitable and support-heavy, because customers did not really understand what they had bought. So PMT stopped selling systems and started selling the service — web-based, monthly subscription, PMT keeping the thing running. The hard part was persuading customers that not owning the software was an advantage. It took a few years.
This was years before anyone had coined the term SaaS.
Mid 2000s
GSM dialup gave way to GPRS, but meters could not manage a TCP/IP stack. PMT designed and built modems with a Java virtual machine inside them, and — as far as we know, anywhere in the world — became the first to communicate with a meter over TCP/IP. We ran our own private APN and our own RADIUS server, because there was nobody to buy that from either.
2007 onward
PMT was the first in South Africa to deploy true smart metering. The customers were shopping centres and commercial buildings, not utilities — because utilities were reluctant to adopt the technology, and largely still are. That single fact explains the shape of our customer base ever since.
Today
PMT now designs its own meter range, more closely aligned to South African smart metering regulations. We also remain an NES value added reseller and still read many thousands of NES meters — because an installed estate does not stop being someone's revenue just because a newer product exists.
PMT is privately held by its two directors. There is no parent company overseas, no investor with a holding period, and nobody between the person who designs a meter and the person accountable for it.
It is worth saying plainly because the alternatives in this market are usually a multinational's local sales office or a business that has changed hands twice. The engineer who obtained our laboratory's accreditation in 1996 still signs the certificates.
The pairing was deliberate. An engineering company run only by engineers tends to build excellent things and manage them poorly — so the commercial leadership was brought in from outside, from people who had run larger businesses, rather than improvised from within.
Managing Director · joined 1997
Came to PMT from a corporate career — Chief Financial Officer at Marley Pipe Systems, then Chief Executive of Sara Lee in South Africa — and took on a small engineering company as a deliberate change of challenge. He was appointed Managing Director directly, because the skills he brought were the ones the company did not have. B.Com (UNISA), business economics and marketing. Shareholder and director.
Engineering Director · joined 1996
B.Eng cum laude in electrical and electronic engineering, University of Johannesburg, and a Masters Diploma in Technology from Pretoria University of Technology. Registered Professional Engineer and Professional Energy Manager. Began at Eskom in 1981 as a technician in training and left as senior metering engineer in the Transmission Group. Named technical signatory on PMT's SANAS scope of accreditation. Shareholder and director.
Head office & calibration laboratory
23 Silverstone CrescentWestern Cape operations
KwaZulu-Natal operations
