How to banish popular electricity theft in a very complex distribution environment
In the beginning of the 21st Century, the Government of the Republic of Nigeria launched a vast program to improve and to expand the power sector in the country and which would, in a second phase, lead to the unbundling of NEPA (the National Electric Power Authority), the national power company of Nigeria, in three business activities: power generation, power transmission and power distribution.
Whereas NEPA was confronted by an accumulation of the lack of fuel for the necessary power generating, important technical (transmission and distribution) losses, bad electricity metering, electricity theft, an incorrect billing system and insufficient cash collections, the Government of the Republic of Nigeria charged the French SUEZ Group with an important Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Program in the Islands District in Lagos, one of the key-districts for NEPA.
The French SUEZ Group requested, based on his successful achievements in the Republic of Kazakhstan, one of the current PDG Managers to take the lead in an international RCM Team composed of five complementary utility managers and managing some 250 local Nigerian utility managers and utility workers.
Achievements
Through a vast information and communication technologies (ICT) program, innovative management approaches and a strict monitoring (and repression) program on electricity metering, billing and collection, the international RCM Team has been able to improve the billing rates and the cash collection rates from nearly 80 % to nearly 90 % in a three-year time period.
Considering the volatile availability of power in the country, the RCM Team launched a new definition: “the cash collected per unit electricity delivered to the specific RCM contract area”.
In this respect it achieved an improvement by more than 25 % in less than 3 years.
