The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has issued a total of 70 licences, permits and certifications in continuing efforts at deregulating the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) to enhance easy access to power supply.
This figure was achieved in fourth quarter of the year 2024 as contained in the Commission’s fourth quarter report released on Monday.
The breakdown of the licences, permits and certifications issued include: One 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.
Towards strengthening compliance and enforcement in the NESI, the Commission issued 14 Rectification Directives (RD) and 16 Notices of Intention to Commence Enforcement (NICE) to licensees for different breaches/defaults during the quarter.
However, remittances by Special and Bilateral Customers in the quarter under review is not appreciable as statistics shows that the 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.
Similarly, 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 respect of resolution of customer complaints, power Distribution Companies (DisCos) only successfully 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 DisCos.
This is even as statistics shows that there were increased billing and collection efficiencies by all DisCos recording ₦509.84 billion revenue collection out of ₦658.40 billion billed to customers within the fourth quarter 2024.
According to the NERC report, “The number of complaints received across all DisCo-CCUs was 275,681, which represents a -16.13% decrease compared to the 328,696 received in 2024/Q3. As in previous quarters, metering, billing and service interruption were the prevalent issues of customer complaints during the quarter.
“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.”
In the case of 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%. The energy offtake during the quarter (3,360.77MWh/h) represents a decrease of 84.36MWh/h (-2.45%) compared to the 3,445.13MWh/h recorded in 2024/Q3.
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 relative to the 82.15% recorded in 2024/Q3”, NERC noted in its report just as the total revenue collected by all DisCos in 2024/Q4 was ₦509.84 billion out of ₦658.40 billion billed to customers translating to a collection efficiency of 77.44%.
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