AEDC Meters 54% Customers, Targets 500,000 More With MAP Policy

The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) said it is ready to deploy 500,000 meters using Meter Assets Providers (MAP) firms it has procured, to completely meter all its customers.

The Managing Director of CEC Africa, the core investor of AEDC, Mr Emmanuel Katepa in an exclusive interview yesterday said, “We have been ready for a while as we have taken our contracts to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for approval. AEDC as last mid-year has metered 54 per cent of customers.

“Before MAP, we had a 222,000 metering contract. We expect another 500,000 units under MAP which will be 100 per cent metering of all our customers. If NERC approves our procurement, then we can start almost immediately,” Katepa said.

Clarifying issues of energy load rejection as portrayed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCNJ) recently, the AEDC investor said the auto re-closer system installed at its injection substations now enables it to accept more energy and serve areas where customers pay for the energy to solve liquidity issue in the electricity market.

“If you check the NERC record, AEDC consistently take excess load of 13 per cent from the grid rather than the approved 11.5 per cent energy allocation. We had a N4 billion penalty on us for taking excess load in the past when the rule prohibits DisCos from taking surplus power,” Katepa explained.