Participants at a retreat organised by the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing have advocated the review of Nigeria’s Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) extant licenses and regulations governing the operations of Generating Companies (GENCOs) and Distribution Companies (DISCOs) to accommodate new entrants to increase competiveness and performance in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
The retreat was attended by top federal civil servants who argued that increasing further participation by other stakeholders would engender better performance by operators in the sector.
The requirements for operators in the industry include, for instance, that companies planning to generate more than 500MW should pay a processing fee of N500,000.00, a license fee of $140,000 or its naira equivalent. These are in addition to N250,000 processing fees for extension of tenure, and a 1.5 percent of licensee’s charges/Kw as annual operating fee.
There are currently 11 Discos, .. Gencos and one Transmission Company.
Meanwhile, despite the epileptic supply of electricity across the country by electricity distribution companies, energy received by them rose from seven percent to 26,385 GWH in 2018, from 24,616 gigawatts hours (GWH) in 2017 to. One Gigawatt (GWH) of electricity is equivalent of 1000mw of electricity.
However the energy billed by the companies increased 10 percent to 20,852 GWH in 2018, from 18,882 GWH in 2017. This means a 10 percent improvement in blocking power leakages.
Revenue collection also increased by 21 percent to N 438 billion in 2018, from N363 billion in 2017.
Increase in collection was as a result of the companies’ improved collection efficiency from 61 percent in 2017 to 66 percent in 2018; and a reduction in Average Technical Collection & Commercial losses from 53 percent in 2017 to 48 percent in 2018.
In a related development the distribution companies in Nigeria’s power sector have called on the Federal Government to brace up and holistically address the problems facing the power sector.
Sunday Oduntan, Executive Director for Research and Advocacy of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), an umbrella organisation of the Discos said the companies no longer had the responsibility of providing meters to customers as the Meter Assets Provider (MAP) programme of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had taken over the responsibility for the task.
He said NERC had approved 121 firms to participate in the scheme. The ANEND executive said that the Discos had therefore taken a backseat in the task, and would only support the MAP operators to do their jobs.
MAP was initiated by NERC to improve meter deployment rate in the country’s electricity sector using approved third-party operators.
“The failures of the legacy years caught up with us when we came on board and in trying to roll out meters, we need to do a lot more”, he said.
The Discos, he said, had done quite a lot in their performance agreements. “There are a number of meters that we were required to provide within five years, and within the five-year period, we did 88 percent of that.”
“In summary, the MAP providers are essentially now in charge of metering and not the Discos. We are participants and have roles to play,” he added.
“We are playing along and doing what we are expected to do and asked to do as Discos, but we are not the ones that will now provide meters to Nigerians going forward and people should understand that.”
He said that the Discos support anything or programme that would make it possible for Nigerians to have meters, adding: “We are partners and want people to understand that MAP providers are now in charge of meters and that is the fact that Nigerians should understand. I don’t want any politician to start playing politics that it is not, it is MAP and we support MAP.”
Olusola Bello
