FG announces plan to distribute 10 million meters to electricity consumers

Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu says the federal government will provide 10 million meters to electricity consumers in the next five years to address the metering gap.

Mr Adelabu said this in Abuja on Friday during the ministerial briefing on the performance of President Bola Tinubu’s administration in the last one year.

He said the provision of the meters, under the Presidential Metering Initiative, would close the metering gap and reduce estimated billing.

The minister said the initiative was scheduled to provide two million meters per annum in the next five years to improve sector liquidity and limit estimated billing.

“We have over seven million meter gap in the industry; out of over 12 million customers, just a little over five million are metered.

“Everybody is complaining of estimated billing, and the president is determined to put an end to estimated billing,” he said.

Mr Adelabu also said the ministry had just completed the bidding process for another 1.5 million meters financed by the World Bank Distribution Support Recovery Programme to improve sector liquidity.

He said that the contracts for the meters would be awarded to meter providers in a few months.

Mr Adelabu said about 50,000 meters were procured and deployed to military formations nationwide to reduce the debts of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).

He also said that in November 2023, Mr Tinubu and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz witnessed the signing of an accelerated performance agreement to continue on the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) – the SIEMENs Project.

The minister said the project aimed to improve the country’s electricity supply, adding that the implementation of the pilot phase had improved infrastructure.

“This includes additional grid evacuation capacity by 280 Megawatts (MW) and an additional 183MW to be inaugurated by the end of June,” he said.

Mr Adelabu said that in Phase 1 of the PPI, the federal government planned to rehabilitate 15 brownfield sub-stations by August and construct 22 greenfield sub-stations by October.

“This is a total of 37 sub-stations across the country, and once this is completed, the sector will be able to deliver a stable power supply,” he said.

According to him, the power sector has been able to achieve 5,000 MW of power on May 3, for the first time in three years.

“We generated, transmitted and distributed 5,503.45 megawatts of power, where we have been generating below 4,000.

“Our target is to achieve 6,000 megawatts before the end of this year,” he said.

(NAN)