Enugu Disco to deploy 200,000 smart meters

As part of its commitment to meter all its customers, the management of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) said the company has concluded plans to deploy additional 200,000 smart meters to its customers across the South East region.

To this effect, EEDC has awarded contracts to three companies, which are: Mojec International Limited, MBH Power and Genus Power Infrastructure Limited.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, Robert Dickerman, said: “we have identified metering as a major need of our customers, and providing them with meter is our primary obligation as an organization, adding that with the deployment of these meters, our collection and energy losses will be reduced drastically”.

According to him, metering our customers has always been our priority, but due to the high level of energy theft and meter bypass, which constitute the huge revenue loss, we had to fine-tune and perfect our metering processes.

Speaking further, he said, metering customers has been a major challenge facing most distribution companies; and the peculiarity of high prevalence of energy theft and meter bypass in the South East region has not also helped the situation. As a matter of fact, over 70% of the prepaid meters on the network are bypassed.

However, EEDC promises to sustain this multibillion metering program on incremental basis, as that is the only way the current metering gap can be closed up.

He added that customers are therefore advised to protect EEDC installations, avoid tampering with these meters and pay their electricity bills promptly.

EEDC has therefore deployed Geographical Information System (GIS) to map the network areas, and equally embarked on elaborate enumeration of its customers within the network with a view to providing a sustainable and comprehensive all smart metering framework that will address and forestall the high prevalence of meter bypass and energy theft being experienced in the region.

The programme is a continuation of EEDC’s ongoing metering of its Maximum Demand (MD) customers, and the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI), a program designed to enable willing customers within the network obtain their meter by advancing funds to EEDC to purchase and install these meters for them.