* Only 57.07 percent consumers on estimated billing
By Hauwa Ali
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has said that a total of 8.693 million Megawatts-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated in the third quarter of 2021.
NERC made this known in its Third Quarter Report 2021 obtained on Tuesday in Lagos from its website.
The regulatory agency said: ” the total quarterly generation in 2021/Q3 was 8.6million MWh.
“This is a decrease of 211,903.73MWh (-2.38 per cent) compared to the total generation of 8,905,673.76MWh in 2021/Q2.”
According to NERC, the total generation of Shiroro plant increased appreciably by 113,216MWh (+107.58 per cent) during the period under review.
The commission, however said those of Egbin, Okpai and Geregu gas plant declined by 149,379.43MWh (-28.15 per cent), 146,275MWh (52.54 per cent) and 93,808.82MWh (-38.06 per cent) respectively compared to 2021/Q2.
It attributed the decline in operational performance in 2021/Q3 to the unavailability of some generating units due to faults such as oil leakage, high thrust bearing temperature and high rotor vibration among others.
NERC said maintenance and shortages of gas supply also contributed to the decline in performance.
“To improve this performance, the commission continued consultations with relevant stakeholders to develop lasting solutions to gas supply and other challenges that continue to impede capacity utilisation and ultimately electricity generation in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry.
In the same report, the agency also says only 57.07 per cent of electricity consumers in the country were still on estimated billing as at September 2021.
The report reveals that only Ikeja, Benin, Enugu and Port Harcourt electricity Distribution Companies had metered over 50 per cent of their customers as at the period.
The huge metering gap for end-use customers, according to NERC, remains a key challenge in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
It added that a total of 288,431 meters were installed in 2021/Q3 as compared to the 315,717 meters installed in 2021/Q2.
The data showed that out of the 11,069,200 registered energy customers as at September 2021, only 4,753,027 (42.93 per cent) have been metered compared to 4,404,013 (39.08 per cent) metered as at June 2021 out of 11,058,939 registered customers.
According to the document, the metering status of the DisCos as at September 2021 is: Benin DisCo, 54.54 per cent; Abuja, 45.10 per cent; Eko, 43.24 per cent; Ikeja, 63.96 per cent and Enugu , 55.49 per cent.
Others are: Port Harcourt, 54.81 per cent; Ibadan, 37.64 per cent; Jos, 29.12 per cent; Kaduna, 21.84 per cent; Kano, 27.64 per cent; and Yola, 17.19 per cent
It said as a safeguard against over billing of unmetered customers via estimated billing, the commission had set maximum limits to the amount of energy (in kWh) that may be estimated against an unmetered customer on a feeder.
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