DisCos compelled to meter 715,000 users this year to reduce 8m coverage gap

• Amadi, others ask FG to ban estimated billing

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has ordered the country’s eleven power distribution companies to supply 715, 000 prepaid electricity meters in 2024.

This comes as eight million users are still billed arbitrarily in the country amidst the inability of utility companies to provide meters to end-users.
NERC, in its latest multi-year tariff order (MYTO) sent to the eleven distribution companies showed that each of the companies would spend N6.25 billion on metering, bringing the metering bill to N68.75 billion.

While Nigeria currently has about 13 million registered grid-connected electricity customers, only about five million have been metered since the electricity sector was privatised over 10 years.

In November last year, only about 51,631 customers were metered across the country as the rate of coverage remained at 44.23 per cent. Last year, NERC promised that four million meters would be provided to consumers. But the promise remained elusive even as the continuation of the mass metering programme has been a mirage.

In the key performance indicators (KPIs) rooted in the performance agreement (PA) with DisCos, the NERC had earlier stated that power utility companies are charged with the responsibility of metering consumers.

A professor of energy economics, Wunmi Iledare, is still shocked that in this age and time, metering has remained a challenge in Nigeria.

“A metre is critical to properly recover the cost of electricity generation and distribution. It is also a way to know actual energy consumption per household. So, it is shocking that DisCos are lagging in metering their consumers,” Iledare said.

While the ninth National Assembly may have abandoned a bill that attempted to criminalise estimated billing, Iledare said a quick way to meter consumers is to declare estimated billing illegal.

A former Chairman of NERC, Sam Amadi, had insisted that the energy theft and liquidity crisis in the sector would only be addressed if consumers were metered.

“We need to tackle energy theft through rigorous enforcement of laws. But you will not succeed much except most customers are metered, whether postpaid or prepaid. Metering will help a lot with loss reduction, while we work to improve the general efficiency of the sector,” he noted.

Meanwhile, the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc (EEDC) has disclosed readiness to launch the Token Identifier (TID) rollover by the end of February 2024 as part of the STS prepaid meter upgrade.

Head of Corporate Communications at EEDC Emeka Ezeh, emphasized the simplicity of the process and highlighted its mandatory nature for all prepaid meter customers.

According to him, failure to comply may result in the loss of the meter and a disruption in the power supply. To avoid supply disruptions during the rollover, he advised customers to purchase sufficient energy units beforehand, as the vending platform will be temporarily shut down.