BEDC tops metering roll out rating by NERC

Benin Electricity Distribution Plc. (BEDC) has emerged tops in metering progress performance rating report amongst Distribution Companies (Discos) carried out by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in its second quarter 2016 state of affairs of the electricity supply industry.

The report, which came on the heels of additional 100,000 metering plan for the remainder 2016 announced at the recent power sector stakeholders it hosted in Benin, according to a statement, showed BEDC scoring 65.30 per cent to emerge overall lead performer in metering progress aspect of the report which indicates the percentage of customers metered.

BEDC had demonstrated its consciousness of the metering gaps existing across its various customer classes and had commenced the process to cover the metering gap for existing customers in its area of operations.

The company said in a statement that it has been proactive in installation of meters having installed over 120,500 meters since takeover.

The statement noted that BEDC has taken advantage of both the Industry CAPMI Scheme and own funded meters. More than 90,000 out of these have been installed in 2016 alone.

In its metering rollout plan for the rest of the year, BEDC plans to achieve 100 per cent metering of all Industrial and Maximum demand customers by the end of November 2016; installation of another 100,000 meters for domestic and commercial customers for the remainder of the year; extension of the existing Automated Meter Reading (AMR) capability to 3,000 maximum demand meters, and metering of at least 1,000 distribution transformers in order to adequately account for energy billing to customers.

To achieve the targets set, the company said it has in addition to the existing stock of 32,000 meters; placed order for another 45,000 units for distribution, while it has also recently re-engineered its metering process with a view to eliminating all administrative bottlenecks to reduce processing and installation time.