Consumers paid N1.27tn for electricity within three years – Discos

Electricity consumers in the country paid a gross sum of N1.27 trillion within three years to power distribution firms (Discos) in settlement of their bills, figures from the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) on Thursday showed.

Consumers’ spend on electricity came to N363 billion in 2017, N437.9 billion in 2018 and was N473 billion in 2019.

Output in 2017 totalled 18,882 gigawatt-hours (valued at N597.3 billion), that of 2018 summed up to 20,852 GWh (valued at N661.6 billion) while the one for 2019 was 21,702 GWh (N695 billion).

“The Discos only collect an estimated 24 per cent of the tariff revenue, while the balance goes to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, generation companies and other industry stakeholders,” said ANED.

Discos collected revenue worth N127 billion in the first quarter of this year by billing 5,768 GWh estimated at N187 billion out of the 6,911GWh they received.

Read also: NERC suspends hike on electricity tariff

“The collection in Q1 2020 hit a new record of N127bn, 10 per cent more than the same quarter last year,” ANED disclosed.

The power supplied by the distributors between January and March, however, was way below their target during the last minor performance appraisal for 2020.

Technical difficulties like load misalignment with Discos, absence of spinning reserve and TCN interface challenges, dearth of investment in distribution infrastructure as well reluctance to execute TCN’s growth plan are some of the major limitations facing the distribution segment of the electricity value chain, Discos said.

ANED affirmed that registered electricity consumers now grow by 75,000 customers every month, bringing up the clientele of power distributors to 9.5 million.

“Delays/barriers in the implementation of the Meter Asset Providers regulation is making the metering gap to grow, with almost 59.7 per cent of the end-users unmetered.

“Since 2015, there has been no significant improvement in the energy generated and wheeled by the TCN that is finally received by the Discos. It continues to be flat and is only mainly affected by a seasonal effect between the dry and rainy seasons.”

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