At one of Thursday’s sessions at the 12th annual West African Power Industry Convention, the very critical electrification process on metering and energy theft was discussed.
Present at the session were the Chief Strategist and Transformation Officer of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company, Edgar Ernest; the CEO of Mojec Nigeria, Chantelle Abdul; and Tunde Isaac, the Managing Director of FLT Energy Systems Nigeria.
In a presentation by Chris Beale, he said there are two issues under the non-payment for power consumed.
Beale said it is not everyone that is not paying that should be perceived to be trying to steal, but because of the complexity of the tariff regime used for the billing.
The second issue is that of people who do what is termed in the industry as bypass.
He said the solution to the first is making the consumer understand the tariff language, whether per day or per hour, via text messages or reminding them of their payment obligation with explanations of the kilowatt usage as it is done with GSM interaction and call credit.
Beale said the second challenge can be addressed through the security of infrastructure, that is split metering or moving the meter outside the residence of use.
He said smart metering is the only solution to accuracy of data/income.
Abdul said Mojec Nigeria rolls out about 100,000 meters every month, but it does not mean the main problem has been solved as the power transmitter available is too small for the total generated power.
So while the metering is going on, the government needs to work on so many technical aspects, including the expansion of transmission and security of these equipments. Chantell also supported the call for the relocation of these new smart meters to the transformer poles.
He said “that is the check for customers that bypass the meter”.
Edgar said the entire industry is in a hurry while the normal customer idea is absent. Edger said Benin, being a place where customers have decided to not to pay above a certain limit, some staff are forced to reconnect at gun point.
He said a new sensitization programme will soon commence as people need to be made to believe in the DISCO again.
The conference ended encouraging the consumer that the industry will be back in full scale and DISCOs also trying to make things happen.
The providers said this will take a little time to achieve though.