From David Onuoja, Abuja
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), has said that the 2024 fourth quarter revenue of the Distribution Companies of Nigeria (DisCos), has hits ₦509.84 billion in 2024; even as it issued about 70 licences, permits and certifications to Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), for quick service delivery.
This figure was released during the Commission’s fourth quarterly report meeting, held at the Commission headquarters, Abuja recently.
The following are the details of the deregulation: the first is the off-grid generation licence with a total nameplate capacity of 2.63MW. Three new electricity trading licences, Four captive generation permits with a gross capacity of 22.50MW, Five registration certificates for mini-grids, 24 permits for mini-grids, 18 certifications for Meter Service Providers and 15 permits for Meter Asset Providers.
In addition, the Commission issued another 14 Rectification Directives (RD) and 16 Notices of Intention to Commence Enforcement (NICE), to licensees for different breaches/defaults during the quarter.
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It was learnt that six international bilateral customers purchasing power from the gridconnected GenCos made a cumulative payment of $5.21 million against the $14.05 million invoice issued to them by the Market Operator (MO) for services rendered in 2024/Q4.
Again, the domestic bilateral customers made a cumulative payment of ₦1,252.58 million against the ₦1,977.02 million invoice issued to them by the MO for services rendered in 2024/Q4.
In the area of customer complaints resolution, Power Distribution Companies (DisCos), only resolved 1,231 out of the 4,180 complaints that were filed at the NERC-CCU translating to a resolution rate of 29.45% and signifying low rate of resolution of customer complaints by these DisCos.
It was also revealed that DisCos increases their Billings and had so far collected about ₦509.84 billion revenue out of ₦658.40 billion billed to customers within the fourth quarter of 2024.
According to the report, “The number of complaints received from DisCo-CCUs was 275,681, which represents a 16.13% decrease compared to the 328,696 received in 2024/Q3. This shows that there were less in service interruption by customers compare to the previous quarters report in metering, billing and service interruption including the prevalent issues of customer complaints.
“Pursuant to the provisions of its Customer Protection Regulations 2023 (CPR 2023), the Commission set up Forum Offices across the country to review unresolved disputes from the DisCos’ Complaint Handling Units (DisCos-CCU). The total number of active appeals across the Forum Offices in 2024/Q4 was 3,267 made up of 2,034 new appeals in 2024/Q4 and 1,233 pending appeals from 2024/Q3.
“During the period, the forum panels held eighty-four (84) sittings and resolved 2,209 of the appeals filed at Forum Offices nationwide (67.62% resolution rate); the resolution rate was +8.84pp higher than the 58.90% achieved in 2024/Q3. The Commission continues to take measures that will ensure a more efficient customer complaint resolution process starting with improvements in the quality of complaint resolution at the DisCoCCU”, it said.
On the Energy Offtake Performance, the average energy offtake by DisCos at their trading points was 3,360.77MWh/h out of the available PCC of 3,552.26MWh/h, translating to an overall offtake performance of 94.61%.
Within the period under review, the Billing Efficiency of DisCos improved as the total energy received by all DisCos in 2024/Q4 was 7,420.58GWh, while the energy billed to end-use customers was 6,207.84GWh, translating into an overall billing efficiency of 83.66%.
“This represents a +1.51pp increase in billing efficiency compare to the 82.15% recorded in 2024/Q3”.
