The only electricity distribution company being controlled by the Federal Government, Yola Disco had the largest aggregate technical, commercial, and collection losses of 70% compared to the other 11 Discos.
This was from an industry report titled ‘Key Operational & Financial Data of NESI’ for 2019 to 2022″ accessed by The Punch.
According to National Power Portal, “the concept of Aggregate Technical & Commercial losses provides a realistic picture of loss situation in the context it is measured.”
The concept combines all kinds of energy losses namely Technical loss, Theft, inefficiency in billing & commercial loss (Default in payment + inefficiency in collection).
The report revealed that Disco recorded an ATC&C loss of 70 percent. It also records a fall off its Multi Year Tariff Order collection target by 64 per cent.”
The report revealed that the breakdown was out of the 633 gigawatts per hour received in the year under review, the utility firm was able to bill just 358GWh to customers.
Although the Disco billed its consumers for around N19 billion in energy, it was still able to make N10 billion in tariff revenue.
It was also reported that Yola Disco failed to remit N17bn to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading company out of the N21bn market invoice that was issued, sending only N4bn.
Only 87,855 or 18% of the 480,584 users enrolled under the Disco have been metered as of now, leaving a metering gap of 392,729 or 82 percent.
The efficient losses that the Discos are permitted to recover from customers are represented by ATC&C, which is a crucial performance-setting metric for tariff calculation.
According to The Punch, each Disco’s individual ATC&C loss level targets are taken into account by the MYTO, and these targets typically decrease over time as expenditures are made with the intention of minimizing efficiency losses.
Meanwhile, based on the report by Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission from the second quarter of 2022, the 11 Discos’ overall ATC&C losses for the period were 45 percent, made up of 22 percent technical and commercial losses and 29 percent collection losses.
The 11 Discos recorded ATC&C losses that were greater than the permitted limits. The largest negative variations, or 63.43, 38.12, 36.56, 36.45, and 33.87 percent, were found in Kaduna, Kano, Enugu, Jos, and Ibadan relative to their permitted MYTO targets.
NERC said “there was an urgent need for all the Discos to take emergency remedial actions through customer enumeration and increased revenue assurance to improve their ATC&C losses.”
“Failure to resolve this would not only prevent the Discos from being able to meet their upstream obligations, but it would also saddle them with too much debt and erode their equity,” the commission stated.
