Energy consumption: AEDC to introduce online platform for electricity recharge

The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) says it will introduce an online platform for customers to purchase or recharge their electricity credits.

Mr Ahmed Shakarau, Head of Public Relations of the AEDC, said this on Friday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

So AEDC’s customers can soon recharge their electricity credits from the comforts of their homes and offices, using their laptops, palmtops, and other gadgets.

This online recharge would be operational within the four states of AEDC’s franchise areas namely FCT, Kogi, Nasarawa and Niger states.

This platform would be launched latest Tuesday next week and the programme would be operational 24 hours every day and seven days of the week when it becomes operational.

I advise AEDC customers, when the platform becomes operational, to visit these two websites with their palmtops or laptops and click on WWW. LIGHTUP.COM.NG or WWW. BUYPOWER.NG and purchase any amount of energy they want.’’

He added that customers should fill in their meter numbers in any of the websites and make their purchases.

On the ongoing prepaid meters pilot scheme by AEDC, Shakarau said the projects were still running in Utako FCT and Tunga in Niger on pilot basis.

According to him, AEDC is installing 5,000 free prepaid meters in Tunga and 1,250 in Utako to its customers.

Shakarau said that the meters would be a test-run to ascertain their efficiency before AEDC would roll out more of them to customers.

NAN reports that AEDC says it will from this year start installing free 500,000 prepaid meters for its customers.

When the programme starts, AEDC will rollout 100,000 free meters for customers annually.

Shakarau advised customers, who did not want to wait for AEDC to start its mass metering, to use Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI) introduced in 2015 by NERC.

According to Shakarau, customers that use CAPMI to purchase their meters are like lending money to the distribution companies.

When customers pay for these meters through CAPMI, distribution companies would pay them back through the tokens that they would be buying for a certain period of time.

Also distribution companies will pay interest on the purchase depending on the location and the amount customers paid for the meters.‘’

According to him, distribution companies will pay from 12.5 to 15 per cent of interest to the customers who buy their meters through CAPMI.

He called on the customers who felt the installation of prepaid meters in their houses meant paying more for electricity, to stop the notion.

Shakarau added that AEDC would soon start public sensitisation of customers to the importance of using prepaid meters in their houses.

He called on electricity consumers not to tamper with power installations and switch off their appliances when they were not in use, adding that customers should learn to conserve energy. (NAN)