Energy Briefs
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IN order to reduce estimated bills in its catchment area, Eko Electricity Distribution Company Plc has said it would install 200,000 smart prepaid meters for its customers by the end of this year. The company said it had already supplied 46,000 meters to some of the customers following the take-over of the company in November 2013.
Oladele Amoda, managing director, EKEDC, who stated this at the unveiling of some of their meters at the Ijora Business District of EKEDC in Lagos, said the company would ensure that all the customers under its network are provided with meters in less than the five-year period his company signed with the Bureau of Public Enterprises under the privatisation agreement. “We decided to show to the world that we are metering our customers contrary to what people are saying that we prefer to bill customers on estimation instead of metering them.”
He said the company had ordered for meters in large quantity, explaining that the company had taken delivery of over 76, 000 smart meters, and made another order for 100,000 meters. “What we are trying to do is to be able to do 90,000 by the second quarter of this year, and at the end of the year, to make it up to 150,000. We have done earlier 46,000 between when we took over the company and now. By the end of this year, we would have installed about 200,000 meters. We are going to replace all the meters that we met on ground with smart meters.”
The Eko Disco CEO said the new smart metering would address challenges confronting the company including bypassing of meters by customers, energy thefts and other related criminal activities. “We have invested about $15m (N3bn) on Maximum Demand meters, while about N52bn would be spent on the other meters within the next three years programme. We have a robust metering plan that will enable us to meter everybody. But we are operating within the agreement signed with the BPE, which states that we should meter all our customers within five years of operation. But we even want to accelerate and get that done before that time.”
— Feb 22, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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