Benin Disco to invest N2.7 billion on smart meters 

The Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) has unveiled plans to spend about N2.7 billion on smart meters in other to meet the metering requirements of its network.

The Chief Executive Officer, BEDC, Mrs Funke Osibodu, who said this at a media parley in Lagos, stated that the company had recruited 250 young graduates in a bid to give top service to its 741,376 customers.

“The recruitment is in two batches: The first batch consisting 100 young graduates has been completed while 150 young graduates for the second batch are undergoing training as we speak,” she explained.

Osibodu stated the readiness of her company to invest N2.7 billion needed to solve the metering challenge in its network.

BEDC covers four states (Edo, Delta, Ondo and Ekiti) consisting of 4.6 million households and customer base of 741,373.

Osibodu decried the low energy allocation from the national grid currently put at between 280Mega Watts (MW) and 450 MW, adding that the networks requires about 13,000MW to meet its customer’s requirement.

According to her, the electricity firm has set a five-year reposition time table, billed to take it through to transition to the maturity stage.

She said the company is presently working on embedded power projects that are expected to generate about 500MW to the network in the next five years.

Meanwhile, the BEDC boss explained that the Discos took the blame for every problem in the power sector because they directly interface with the power consumers, but in real terms they are not the original source of energy.

She said: “We don’t have control over generation and transmission. We are like collection agents for the entire power industry. Across the financial value chain in the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), we get just 25 per cent of the total collections.

“Once we collect the billing from the customers, the generation companies (GENCOS) get 60 per cent, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) gets 11 per cent.