Eko Disco to eliminate estimated billing in two years

Eko Electricity Distribution Company (Eko Disco) has disclosed to eliminate estimated billing system in the next two years, as it has invested over N55 billion on procurement of smart meters and Maximum Demand meters as agreed with the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in the performance agreement.

Oladele Amoda, managing director/CEO, Eko Disco, told BusinessDay while conducting journalists round the meters the company had taken delivery of and being deployed to various customers in its zone.

Amoda stated Eko Disco had commenced metering since taking over two years ago. This is contrary to what people are saying, especially the labour union, that we are not metering our customers but preferred to continue with estimated billing.

“Billing customers on estimation does not pay us at all because in the process, we underestimate their bills. That’s why we have ordered for meters in large quantity.

“What you are seeing right now is about 10,000 smart meters at this warehouse, we have other meters in some other warehouses. We have just ordered 40,000 this year, which have been delivered. We have placed another order for 100,000 smart meters from an indigenous meter manufacturing company,” Amoda said.

According to Amoda, what the company is trying to do is to do 90,000 installations between now and the second quarter of this year, so that by the end of the year, we would have done 150,000 smart meters installations.

We have earlier done 46,000 after November, when we took over in 2013. When you look at that, you will see that we are doing better in metering. By the end of the year, we would have installed about 200,000 meters, and what we met on ground was less than 200,000 of meters, which are either analogue or prepaid meters.

We also observed that the meters we inherited were obsolete and their integrity is in doubt. We have resolved to replace all of them with smart meters.

“The Maximum Demand (MD) meters were contracted to a French company abroad because of their sizes. We want the indigenous meter manufacturers to concentrate on three phase and single-phase smart meters while we import the MD meters.

Currently, we have ordered for 7500 MD meters and we have taken delivery of 3,500 units as of today. We are expecting some to be delivered shortly and before the year ends, we would have taken delivery of all the MD meters because we want to ensure all our MD customers are metered immediately while going ahead with other customers, he said.

Olusola Bello