Abuja Electric incurs N80bn imbalance penalty

Abuja Electric- ity Distribu- tion Company (AEDC) has said that it incurred N80 billion as imbalance penalty between November 2013 till date.

Abimbola Odubiyi, exec- utive director, regulatory and stakeholders affairs, AEDC, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja, yesterday.

Odubiyi said the amount was for taking excess of the 11.5 percent of energy allo- cated to it from the national
grid to meet customers’ de- mand, noting that efforts by the company to serve its customers better had put it in huge financial difficulty.

“Because we have taken more power than the na- tional allocation to serve our customers, we have incurred N80 billion in im- balance penalty.

Trying to serve our customers has put us in huge financial dif- ficulty,’’ he said.

He said the company had better facilities compared with ones obtained in other parts of the country to take more power and distribute to consumers, saying “be- cause the facility around us here is better than other parts of the country so we have the ability to take more power.’’

Whenever the genera- tion to the national grid im- proves, the company would get more power to distribute to customers, he said, say- ing the company would continue to do its best to supply power to its teeming customers in the coverage arrears of Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger and FCT.

He however stressed the need to improve on the country’s gas infrastructure to stablise the power sup- ply, and noted the need for strengthening of transmis- sion lines across the country to be able to transmit energy generated from power sta- tions across the country.

“Right now, our trans- mission network capacity is 10,000 megawatts while we have a generation capacity of 8,000 megawatts,’’ he said.