New Telegraph

BEDC begins Service-Based Tariff system

In furtherance of and commitment to providing incremental improvements in the quality and quantity of electricity supply, aside deepening its obligations to customers, the management of BEDC Electricity Plc. (BEDC) has commenced the implementation of a new Service-Based Tariff structure which took effect from Tuesday, September 1. The new dispensation Service-Based Tariff (SBT) contained in a Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) Order signed by its Chairman, Prof. James Momoh, is a leap into a regime where customers of BEDC across the franchise states of Delta, Edo, Ekiti, and Ondo will be migrated to a threshold where there will be continuous improvement in the quality of service delivery that the company offers.

According to BEDC management, the new SBT will allow customers enjoy a certain minimum of hours of power availability and also pay for appropriate rates for services rendered based on this regular availability as the new SBT essentially affects customers that live in areas where BEDC promises to provide electricity for at least 12hours per day.

BEDC says it recognizes that a firm improvement in electricity supply would require investments in reinforcing feeders, transformers, protection equipment, and other components, hence a Service-Based Tariff shall provide a financial remedy to bolster improved service defined in terms of hours of supply indicated by availability, reliability, and quality whilst recognising the changes in macroeconomic indices – forex, inflation and cost of capital. To operationalize the new service dispensation, customers will be disaggregated into various clusters/ bands based on these guaranteed hours of service and using a number of hours of daily availability as a measure to determine the tariff rates with those with more power paying more than those with less power.

“The new tariff regime also allows customers to move to upper bands of more power availability as their quality of service improves and accordingly pay appropriate prices, “the BEDC release said. BEDC assured customers of its commitment to the implementation of new Performance Improvement Plans (PIP) to ensure rapid improvement in service quality for those customers who currently receive low service and subsequently graduate them to appropriate tariff band upon service improvement, adding,” Similarly, the strengthening of customer care centers to improve responses to customers’ complaints and acceleration of metering by Meter Asset Providers (MAP) are cardinal objectives.”

Given the new dispensation, BEDC solicited for the full cooperation of customers by ensuring the sustainability of this new service mantra by paying appropriately service-aligned electricity bills as at when due and avoiding unsafe practices within the network including energy theft, while assuring consumers under its franchise of expedited metering, while the capping of estimated billing as directed by the regulator, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has been activated.

BEDC announced that it has come up with modalities to reduce the number of interrupted areas (customers). These are: quick response to fault clearing; Preventive maintenance schedule, construction of new 33KV and 11KV overhead lines to relief existing overloaded feeders; installation of new power and distribution substations to relief overloaded ones; reduction in time out set in load shedding preparation list. This will improve revenue generation; effective metering of customers to prevent theft and losses; replacement of aged equipment to pave way for easy intake of energy delivered. The company also said it was working on augmenting power supply supplied from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) national grid with offers from different Independent Power producers (IPPs) producers including mini-grid operators saying that as at 2019, there were offers from over 35 IPP developers who seek to set up their plants in BEDC’s service areas for a total of 1,700MW.

Read Previous

Fuel price hike: PLAC urges NASS to pass PIB

Read Next

El-Rufai: Why we are modernising Kaduna infrastructure

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *