Data from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) showed that 37 firms have been issued fresh permits to generate 762.3 megawatts of electricity in order to improve the epileptic situation of power supply.
An analysis of the commission’s latest Fourth Quarter 2021 Report on Sunday also indicated that the metering of power users dropped by 71.86 percent compared to the number of those metered by power distribution companies in the preceding quarter.
In the latest report, the NERC said, “The commission approved the issuance of four new generation licenses with a total nameplate capacity of 508.5MW and the renewal of two existing licenses in 2021/Q4.
“The commission also granted an aggregate capacity of 253.75MW captive power generation permit to eight companies and approved 25 mini-grid permits.”
It added that a total of 46 metering service providers consisting of 17 installers, 15 manufacturers, two vendors, and 12 importers were also approved by the commission in 2021/Q4.
READ MORE: Nigeria’s Epileptic Power Supply
“The commission granted a total of 85 licenses and permits in 2021/Q4,” the report stated.
It stated that there was still a huge gap in metering by the end users which stands as a huge problem in the industry.
“A total of 81,084 meters were installed in 2021/Q4, as compared to the 288,154 meters installed in 2021/Q3,” the NERC stated.
“The commission’s records indicate that, of the 10,514,582 registered energy customers as at December 2021, only 4,773,217 (45.40 percent) have been metered compared to 42.93 percent metering as of September 2021.”
On unmetered customers, the commission said it has looked into methods to cut down the estimate of fees that gets to unmetered customers to avoid overbilling. The commission had set maximum limits to the amount of energy (energy caps in kWh) that might be billed to unmetered customers.
