The Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), said not less than 1400MW was needed to guarantee steady power supply to 750,000 households and 13 million people in Edo, Delta, Ekiti and Ondo State.
The spokesman of the company, Mr Tayo Adekunle, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Benin on Tuesday.
Adekunle appealed to customers to understand the value chain in the power sector, saying as at Monday only 325.34MW was supplied to BEDC to distribute to customers in its area of coverage.
He explained that BEDC on its part had embarked on network expansion and provided or repaired faulty transformers ranging from 300KVA to 2.5KVA, all in a bid to improve power supply.
He added that the company had also embarked on employment and training of fresh graduates to bridge the manpower gap in the sector.
“BEDC is only a retailer of electricity and not a generating outfit, and as such could only distribute what they get in form of power.
“As I speak with you, we only get nine per cent of what is generated as power from the generating company; as at Monday July 2, the BEDC got only 325.34MW from the 3614MW generated by GENCO.
“This is a far cry from the total of 1400MW needed to service our clients in the four states of Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta that we cover,” said Adekunle.
He further said to satisfy its customers the company introduced a load shedding system of three hours on and three hours off.
“The BEDC is not isolated from the limitations within the industry, and we have been trying our best to provide safe and reliable electricity to our customers,” he said.
He commended the efforts of the Federal Government towards diversifying the sources of power generation through renewable energy, coal and other sources, which he said would boost power supply.
On the issue of metering, Adekunle said BEDC had achieved 65.30 per cent progress in its area of coverage, leaving a metering gap of 34.7 per cent.
He said the gap would soon be covered as the company was taking advantage of the Federal Government’s Meter Access Provider (MAP).
“As for the metering issue, we are happy that the government has come out with a position that will make this easier; so very soon, the issue of alleged over-billing will be put to rest.
“On our own we have provided a lot of meters even though we have not provided for all the customers,” he stated. (NAN)