The question on the lips of Nigerians is: when are we going to enjoy steady power supply? With billions of dollars spent on the sector in the last 17 years, the only thing that Nigerians want to see is result. Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, speaks to TheCable on the various issues bugging down the sector — as well as the road map to stability.

UNINTERRUPTED POWER SUPPLY? WHEN?

Uninterrupted power supply is not an event, it’s a journey. The first is incremental energy. As we get that, our electricity experience gets better, then we go to steady power. Steady power means we have enough because we know how many people need power. Today, we don’t have the census of our energy demand; everyone is estimating by mouth and that is not a number to plan for. And every investment you make has to be accounted for because it reflects in tariff. You must recover every investment so if you have excess, you will overpay. We must get it right. That is the road to steady power, we need a census first then we move to steady power but incremental energy experience will relieve us.

WHY THERE’S ESTIMATED BILLING

Now they give you the power if everything is working. If there is no meter, disputes arise and people complain about estimated billing. A lot of people are using electricity without paying for it. Where there is no meter, some of the things you see is that the distributor knows that he has supplied a certain amount of electricity to an area but there are only 10 houses on the street so he shares the amount of electricity by 10 and you get that estimated bill. Sometimes in estimated billing, you are paying for somebody’s theft and the distributor must pay to the people who supplied power.

ON PREPAID METERS AND CABALS

There is no cabal, it’s a long story but we are almost there, we are close. The people who should supply meters are the DisCos. It’s part of their licensing agreement and they should provide it free because it is their measuring device for calculating how much to bill you. When they couldn’t do it, government allowed them to do a credit applied metering initiative (CAPMI) where you advance money to provide a meter they should have provided and then they defray on your bill but even that, when they collected your money, they couldn’t supply the meters within 45 days or 60 days.

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER SUPPLY CHAIN

The easiest way to explain the power situation without being technical is to say that we don’t have enough power, although there are other problems on the side. If in one family, we have 12 adults and there is only one bottle of water, all of us will not get filled with one bottle, so let us use that bottle of water as an example. We are trying to get more water so that everybody’s thirst can be satisfied. We have to produce electricity. Currently we use gas and hydro. If there is no gas, which is the fuel that drives the turbines and activates the electrical side that produces electricity… the turbines are like the generators at home, only bigger. It has an electrical and mechanical side. The mechanical side is the engine, which in the case of the home generator uses the fuel. So anytime you don’t get petrol, you know you can’t run your generator. Same thing if you don’t get gas. If you have half tank, it will run and shut down. So we don’t have enough gas production as well.

Source: https://www.thecable.ng/exclusive-fashola-speaks-uninterrupted-power-estimated-billing-prepaid-meters-machetes

clueless Govt.