Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
As the National Assembly plans to make estimated billing system a criminal offence, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) yesterday, said that it has invested over N11 billion to provide 178,000 meters to its customers across its franchise areas of Kogi, Abuja, Nasarawa and Niger states.
To this end, it also said that it has installed over 50,000 meters within six months of the commencement of the Meter Assets Providers (MAP) regulation. In addition, the DisCo had ordered a total of 7,000 maximum demand and distribution transformer meters during the period at the cost of N1.7 billon and installed 4,460 of them country-wide.
A statement by the General Manager, Corporate Communications, Mr. Oyebode Fadipe, gave the breakdown of the metering investments by AEDC from the privatisation period up to 2018, and the MAP metering figure.
With its unique MAP instant metering train strategy where it deploys its officials and ICT resources to support the three MAP firms to provide instant meters to willing customers, AEDC announced that it reached an approximate 50,000 meter installation milestone in November 2019.
AEDC rolled out its mass metering scheme under MAP regulation after NERC approved three MAP firms to work with the DisCo in May 2019.
Mojec International is metering AEDC customers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Kogi; Turbo Energy is installing meters for AEDC customers in Niger State and Meron Company is installing meters for the customers in Nasarawa State.
It said out of the verified 54,214 meter applications from customers under MAP, 49,285 meters have been installed and connected. It gave a breakdown of MAP metering across its five regions in the FCT; Niger, Nasarawa and Kogi states.
AEDC has installed 42,560 meters in the FCT alone. It installed 11,208 meters in FCT West; 10,604 units in FCT South, and another 10,419 in FCT East. 6,256 meters were installed in FCT North and 4,073 units in FCT Central.
In Niger State, the DisCo has installed 2,615 meters. Another 2,607 meters have been installed in Nasarawa State, and 1,503 units were installed in Kogi State, he said.
“Meters worth N3.634 billion were installed in AEDC’s franchise area between 2014 and 2016, under the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI), a regulation developed by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).