The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has said that a total of 8.693 million Megawatts-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated in the third quarter of 2021. it also said that 57.07 per cent of electricity consumers in the country were still on estimated billing as at September 2021. NERC made this disclosure in its Third Quarter Report 2021 made available in Lagos on its website. The document showed that only Ikeja, Benin, Enugu and Port Harcourt electricity Distribution Companies had metered over 50 per cent of their customers as at the period. The huge metering gap for end-use customers, according to NERC, remains a key challenge in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
It added that a total of 288,431 meters were installed in 2021/Q3 as compared to the 315,717 meters installed in 2021/Q2. The regulatory agency said, ”the total quarterly generation in 2021/Q3 was 8.6million MWh. “This is a decrease of 211,903.73MWh (-2.38 per cent) compared to the total generation of 8,905,673.76MWh in 2021/Q2.” According to NERC, the total generation of Shiroro plant increased appreciably by 113,216MWh (+107.58 per cent) during the period under review. The commission, however said those of Egbin, Okpai and Geregu gas plant declined by 149,379.43MWh (-28.15 per cent), 146,275MWh (52.54 per cent) and 93,808.82MWh (-38.06 per cent) respectively compared to 2021/Q2. It attributed the decline in operational performance in 2021/Q3 to the unavailability of some generating units due to faults such as oil leakage, high thrust bearing temperature and high rotor vibration among others.
NERC said maintenance and shortages of gas supply also contributed to the decline in performance. “To improve this performance, the commission continued consultations with relevant stakeholders to develop lasting solutions to gas supply and other challenges that continue to impede capacity utilisation and ultimately electricity generation in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry. The commission is also working with the System Operator (SO) towards the creation of spinning reserves to improve the grid’s overall frequency stability,” it said. The data showed that out of the 11,069,200 registered energy customers as at September 2021, only 4,753,027 (42.93 per cent) have been metered compared to 4,404,013 (39.08 per cent) metered as at June 2021 out of 11,058,939 registered customers.
According to the document, the metering status of the DisCos as at September 2021 is: Benin DisCo, 54.54 per cent; Abuja, 45.10 per cent; Eko, 43.24 per cent; Ikeja, 63.96 per cent and Enugu , 55.49 per cent. Others are: Port Harcourt, 54.81 per cent; Ibadan, 37.64 per cent; Jos, 29.12 per cent; Kaduna, 21.84 per cent; Kano, 27.64 per cent; and Yola, 17.19 per cent. It said as a safeguard against over billing of unmetered customers via estimated billing, the commission had set maximum limits to the amount of energy (in kWh) that may be estimated against an unmetered customer on a feeder. The report said this depends on the customer category and tariff band with the maximum limits computed based on three months data of actual consumption records of metered customers according to customer category and tariff band.
The document also provided update on the efforts of NERC to close the metering gap in the country through the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) scheme and the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP). It said “The MAP initiative has since its inception metered a total of 591,223 customers. Similarly, the NMMP is an initiative of the Federal Government of Nigeria launched in 2021 to rapidly bridge the metering gap in the NESI. This is a policy intervention with support from the Central Bank of Nigeria for the provision of long-term (10-year tenure) single-digit interest loans to DisCos strictly for the provision of meters to customers. This policy provides that only local meter manufacturers or assemblers shall participate in the NMMP. Customers are metered on DisCo’s own account without paying for the meters by customers except through end-user tariffs. The NMMP has since its inception metered a total number of 793,978 customers.”
