By Adedapo Adesanya
The Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) has disclosed that revenue collection by the power distribution companies (DisCos) in Nigeria rose to N127 billion in the first three months of the year.
The collection between January and March 2020 hit a new record of N127 billion, 10 per cent more than N114 billion that was generated for the same quarter last year.
This was contained in a document released by the association recently. It added that energy billed by the Discos was 5,768 gigawatt-hours (equivalent to N187 billion), out of the 6,911 GWh it received in the period under review.
The report noted that energy sent out in the first quarter of 2020 was lesser than what was projected at the last minor review for 2020.
According to the DisCos, this was because the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) has not solved critical issues such as the lack of spinning reserve and load misalignment between the distributors and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
The document also faulted the industry for not solving interface issues and queried its delays in the implementation of TCN´s expansion plan and its lack of investment in DisCos’ infrastructure.
“The oft-bandied issue of load rejection by Discos seemingly seeks to hide all of the above issues.
“The Disco’s uncertainty on the energy to be received from the TCN has become a major threat and it will hurt the core of their performance improvement plans as many of them are based on the basis of the projections done by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) at June’s Minor Review 2019,” it said.
The body noted that only three out of the 11 DisCos were able to receive more energy than what was recorded in the previous quarter, while others got lesser during the period.
“Importantly, only three DisCos: Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC); Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC); and Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IE) received more energy than the same quarter of the previous year.
“On the other hand, several Discos received less energy,” the document stated.
According to the group, the number of registered end-users in the industry keeps increasing at a rate of about 75,000 new customers per month, resulting in more than 9.5 million customers in total.
