Enugu electricity flags off massive metering of customers

…Deploys 200,000 smart meters

IN a deft move designed to address the major need of electricity consumers in the South East, Enugu Electric­ity Distribution Company (EEDC) has embarked on a massive metering of its cus­tomers.

With a total of 200,000 meters set to be deployed, Enugu DISCO is fulfilling its commitment to meter all its customers as well as boost growth in the Nigerian Me­tering market.

To this effect, it has award­ed contracts to three leading Metering companies: Mojec International Limited, MBH Power and Genus Power In­frastructure Limited.

The program is a con­tinuation of EEDC’s ongoing metering of its Maximum Demand (MD) customers, and the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Im­plementation (CAPMI), a program designed to enable willing customers within the network obtain their meter by advancing funds to EEDC to purchase and install these meters for them.

Metering customers has been a major challenge fac­ing most distribution com­panies; and the peculiarity of high prevalence of energy theft and meter bypass in the South East region has not also helped the situation. As a matter of fact, over 70 per cent of the prepaid meters on the network are bypassed.

EEDC has, therefore, deployed Geographical In­formation System (GIS) to map the network areas, and equally embarked on elaborate enumeration of its customers with a view to providing a sustainable and comprehensive all smart metering framework that will address and forestall the high prevalence of meter by­pass and energy theft in the region.

The Managing Direc­tor/Chief Executive Officer, Enugu Electricity Distribu­tion Company, Mr. Robert Dickerman, said: “We have identified metering as a ma­jor need of our customers, and providing them with meter is our primary obliga­tion as an organisation. We are hopeful that with the deployment of these meters, our collection and energy losses will be reduced drasti­cally”.

He added: “Metering our customers has always been our priority, but due to the high level of energy theft and meter bypass, which constitute the huge revenue loss, we had to fine-tune and perfect our metering pro­cesses”.

EEDC promises to sustain this multibillion metering program on incremental ba­sis, as that is the only way the current metering gap can be closed up.

Customers are therefore advised to protect EEDC installations, avoid tamper­ing with these meters and pay their electricity bills promptly.