Business a.m.
Nigerian Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) surpassed their revenue collection targets in the first quarter of 2024, generating N291.62 billion in revenue out of a total of N368.65 billion billed to customers.
According to a recent report by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), this translates to a collection efficiency of 79.11 percent, reflecting an increase of 5.32 percent compared to the previous quarter of 2023, which recorded a collection efficiency of 73.79 percent.
This was even as Nigeria lost a substantial drop in power generation due to gas shortages, leaving the country’s power grid short of 673 megawatts during the first quarter of the year. The report revealed that the average available generation capacity across all the 27 plants in the country during the quarter was 4,249.10MW representing a loss of 673.16MW, or a 13.68 per cent decrease compared to the 4,922.26MW recorded in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The NERC revealed in its latest report that 17 out of the 27 grid-connected power plants in the country experienced a decrease in their power generation capacities during the first quarter of 2024 compared to the last quarter of 2023. The NERC report also disclosed that the average energy offtake by the DisCos in the first quarter of 2024 was 3,283.87 megawatt-hours (MWh/h), marking a decline of 429.29MWh/h from the previous quarter’s offtake of 3,713.16MWh/h.
According to NERC, the total energy received by all DisCos in the first quarter of 2024 was recorded at 7,171.93 gigawatt-hours (GWh), while the energy billed to end-use customers amounted to 5,769.52GWh. The overall billing efficiency for the quarter stood at 80.45 percent, representing an increase of 2% when compared to the 78.45 percent recorded in the last quarter of 2023.
