Energy Briefs
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THE Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, EEDC, is losing an average of N2 billion monthly to instances of theft of electricity by consumers under the network. Temitope Borisade, deputy managing director, EEDC, stated this after the post-privatisation tour of its distribution network by the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE. He said that the operations of the company in the five eastern states were being hampered by massive energy theft perpetrated by its customers.
Borisade explained that while the Disco on a monthly basis loses as much as N2 billion from energy theft, a good number of its customers are hooked on to its network without being properly documented. “From EEDC perspectives, these are commercial losses and we found that customers do this by diverting loads from their meters. Some of them divert consumptions from their heavy equipment.
“We also have cases of welders that hang their wires on our conductors and use that in the middle of the night and these lead to major loses for us. We have an ATC & C loss figure that is in the upwards of 40 percent and the large part of this is due to energy theft. There are also syndicates that clown our meters and sell to customers who are eventually not on our customer base, however we have a very robust plan that is GIS based. That will capture all building in our licensed areas and we will back that up with enumeration exercise, smart meters that will be on pole tops and customer interface units in the homes and location of the customers. We believe that these will reduce the ability of customers to use our electricity without being discovered. On a monthly basis we lose an upward of N2 billion to energy theft,” he said.
Borishade noted that in addition to the new technological measures that the Disco plans to deploy to curtail theft of energy allocated to it, it has engaged the Nigerian Police Force to arrest and prosecute offenders. He, however, stated that the process of prosecuting them through the court has being extremely slow, adding that such offenders often go back to continue in their acts after they are granted bail by the courts.
— Dec 21, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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