DISCOs agree to comply with NERC’s no metering no billing directive

“The DISCOs don’t need to agree with the NERC order but obey. What NERC said about customers not going to pay unless they are metered is not a suggestion but regulatory order. Any DISCO therefore has the simple right to choose between compliance to stay in business and insist on shortchanging the people in disobedience to NERC and be sent out of the power distribution business,” said the respondent.

The Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs) have been said to have agreed to comply with the notice issued by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on the metering of Maximum Demand (MD) customers.

Operating under the aegis of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), in a statement issued last weekend in Abuja, the DISCOs promised to meter all their customers sooner than later.

“The Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors hereby provides clarification on the information contained in certain recent publications, on the notice issued by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, (NERC) on the metering of Maximum Demand (MD) customers.”

“The publications have, erroneously, stated that the requirement of non-payment of electricity obligations, in the absence of the customer not being provided with a meter, applies to all electricity consumers. This is incorrect. For clarity, this requirement only applies to, and is specific to MD customers and not residential customers.”

“For further clarity, MD customers are commercial and industrial customers who consume high levels of electricity and contribute substantially to the revenues of Distribution Companies, DISCOs. The consumption threshold for MD customers is 45KVA. The MD meters are connected on the 11Kv (High tension wire) electricity lines, mostly on dedicated transformers. The customers include heavy users of electricity like commercial business plazas, large firms, and small-scale industries among others.”

“We recognize that significant interest in the NERC notice is directly linked to our customers’ requirement that they be metered. And rightly so. It is critically important that we state that there is no more interested party in the comprehensive metering of our electricity consumers than the DISCOS. And this is because we understand and fully appreciate the importance of the balance between electricity consumers tracking their consumption versus DISCOs having a measure of electricity supplied to their customers, that metering brings. It is our hope and expectation that such metering will be achieved sooner rather than later,” it added.

It would be recalled that the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), while charging the DISCOs that there is a legal document banding them to behave well by ensuring delivery of quality services and power to the people, had made it clear that the Federal Government would deal directly with individual DISCOs and not any association because, he said, the agreement signed before they got the franchise to distribute energy was not between government and association but individual company.

It is as a result of this that a respondent told The DEFENDER that, “The DISCOs don’t need to agree with the NERC order but obey. What NERC said about customers not going to pay unless they are metered is not a suggestion but regulatory order. Any DISCO therefore has the simple right to choose between compliance to stay in business and insist on shortchanging the people in disobedience to NERC and be sent out of the power distribution business.

“We thank God that we now truly have a Government of Change in town. If not so, these DISCOs are not ready to make the power plan of the government sucxeed,” he said.

Meanwhile, Benin Electricity Distribution Plc (BEDC) will soon commence the publication of power availability schedule for customers in its franchise areas of Edo and Delta states.

Managing Director/Chief Executive officer (CEO), Mrs Funke Osibodu disclosed this at a Media Parley with On-Air Personalities and journalists at the weekend in Benin.