The Ikeja Electric (IE) on Wednesday said it has metered over 5,000 Maximum Demand (MD) customers within its network as directed by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
Mr Felix Ofulue, the Head, Corporate Communications of the company, made the disclosure in an interactive session with the newsmen in Lagos.
According to him, IE has complied with the NERC’s directive to meter all the existing MD customers in the zone.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that MD customers are commercial and industrial customers, who consume high levels of electricity and contribute substantially to the revenue generation of the distribution companies.
NERC had on June 11 directed that MD customers not provided with meters to stop paying estimated bills from the distribution companies.
Ofulue said all unmetered customers would be reached within the stipulated time, adding that it was not possible for all customers to be metered at the same time, because of the costs involved.
He urged customers yet to be reached in the meter roll-out to be patient, saying that no customer would be left out.
Ofulue said that DISCO has an established billing method approved by the industry regulator for billing the unmetered customers based on a number of factors.
He listed those factors to include the customers’ consumption pattern over time and availability of power supply within the particular month for which the customers were billed.
“Currently, all our feeders connecting our consumers without prepaid metered have been metered, which will enable them to get fair estimated bills.
“We are currently metering our consumers in Ikeja GRA and I want to assure all our consumers that they will all be metered,” he said.
Ofulue attributed the low pace in metering the residential consumers to lack of financial muscle to meter all of them.
“A lot of activities are ongoing now on our network; we cannot concentrate only on installation of meters.
“Between now and end of the year, we would have done much on metering of our consumers,” he said.
Ofulue said that the company had spent over N500 million on metering its electricity feeders and transformers to ensure proper accountability of energy consumption.
He said that the company was partnering with the Mojec International Meter Manufacturer to ensure effective metering of customers within the stipulated time frame.
Ofulue said that the customers’ debts profile stood at over N88 billion, which he said, was affecting other development in the network.
He urged electricity consumers to ensure promptly payment of their monthly bills. (NAN)
YO/ROR/GOK