National Mass Meter Deployment Initiative Will Bring an End to Commercial and Collection Losses…Engr Gana
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Engr. Gana: Let me start with the Maximum Demand customers, as at the current billing circle, we have a total of 2268 Maximum Demand customers out of which, 1,876 accounts are active while 392 accounts are inactive. The unmetered MD customers we have as at today are145, that is about 6% of the total MD customers’ population. Of course, some of these unmetered MD customers’ accounts are inactive, so one can confidently say that the metering gap as far as the MD customers are concern is very negligible.
For non-Maximum Demand, the total population as far as the record is concern, what we have for now is 594,411 customers on our data base. I believe with the separation, we should have more than that and out of this, the total of those that are metered is 147,813 and unmetered customers are 446,598. This is what we have as far as our data base is concern for both the MD and Non-MD customers. A cursory look at this statistic clearly show that we have a wider gap in the Non-MD and that is the challenge we are trying to address now.
The Federal Government in an effort to bridge the metering gap nationwide recently launch the National Mass Meter Deployment initiative, how ready is your Unit to carry out this onerous task?
Engr. Gana: The Unit is really ready to carry out the task; we the necessary personnel and the personnel have been given the requisite training to carry out the task. The Management have given all the needed assistance to metering; we have no reason to say we cannot deliver this time around, because initially we were having shortage of manpower and when we complained to the Management, new staff who can do the job were hired and the qualifications of the people hired are relevant to the kind of job we expect them to do. So, as far as we are concern, we are very much ready now to get the customers metered and we also prepared our staff by giving them the required training because this kind of installation is something that you need to have sound knowledge of it. If you don’t at the end of the day, you may likely have wrong installation. So we taught them on how to do the job according to the standard; they were also taught on how to ensure the optimum performance guarantee of the meter at any point and finally how to commission the meter so that at the end of the day, what Management expect to achieve (improved revenue) from metering all the customers will be realized; that is, optimum revenue and we quite thank and appreciate the Management for giving us the hired staff that are relevant to our assignment.
Do you see the Scheme having positive impact on the operations of the Company?
Engr. Gana: Yes, this scheme of metering customers all over we believe is going to have a positive impact on the progress of the Company. We have meters installed at the injection sub-station now; it is on the basis of that the NBET and Market Operator are giving us bills every month. If we do not meter our customers or if they are on direct, we shall always find it very difficult to account for the energy received and at the end of the day, you have so much energy and by the time you add all the aggregate consumption of the customers together the difference is so wide as it is case now. I strongly believe that with this metering scheme now, as soon as all customers are metered, we will be able to account for the energy and this will translate into improved revenue. You will agree with me that billing and collection efficiencies have been our major challenges as a Company and the only panacea to these challenges is effective metering; with this, 100% collection is guaranteed. As such, the National Mass Meter Deployment Initiative could not have come at a more suitable time.
How is the MAPs scheme fairing and what shall be the role(s) of MAPs in the National Mass Metering Initiative?
Engr. Gana: My assessments so far of the MAPs is they are doing their best. Their own position as far as this Mass metering is concern is to install meters and we are to supervised the installation and by tradition, if you are to supervise, you should be able to know better than the person you are supervising; that is why we organized in house training for our staff to acquaint them with full knowledge for them to scrutinize the installations done by the MAPs and we took it upon ourselves to see the MAP vendors with the kind of installations we expect and anything short of that we will not take it and they agreed to do the installation based on that standards.
In the last one year, you have replaced and re-citified many meters, especially the Maximum Demand meters, what is the status of the MD customers as far as metering is concern?
Engr. Gana: In the past one year, we try to do justice to MD meters’ re-citification exercise. As far as metering is concern, if you don’t certify, re-certify and re-citify at regular intervals, there is every likelihood that something that sees electricity on an hourly basis is bound to operate outside the accuracy and since those meters have accuracy class, so what we expect from the performance should be within the accuracy class and if you don’t go out to re-citify the meters regularly, there are some that will be out of range and some customers will even add load and some meters’ current carrying capacity will be much more less than the demand of the customer, by so doing (regular certification and re-certification) you see those ones to be corrected; some to upgrade or downgrade because at any point in time, when a meter cannot see 1-20 of the nominal load of the customer, that meter is bound not to have optimal performance, so we try to go round to see that we citify the meters to operates within the standards range so that we don’t loss revenue. So far, since we started, though the record is increasing, we have re-citified almost about 1200 MD meters and from what we have seen, the meters are now performing well. We also discovered that we are having issue with optimal performance as a result of meter been defective or having fault or some of the current transformers that are not transforming well, we actually reported back to the Management and with kind of intervention of our Chief Marketing and Revenue Assurance, Mal. Abubakar Jimeta, they were able to give us some meters. As I’m talking to you now, we are replacing most of the defective MD meters.
Has the meters certification exercise yielded results?
Engr. Gana: We have done gain analyses as far as the re-citification exercise is concern and with the initial investment Management has done to secure revenue, its shows there are some customers that the Company have gained more than 100% increase in revenue and some 150% increase. What we considered when we are doing the analyses was the three months average performance of the meter and the revenue we obtained from the customers (average three months before we changed the meter and three months after we changed the meter) we also considered the hourly supply because no matter how healthy the installation is, if the supply is not available, the meter cannot see anything; so it was on the basis of these parameters that we are able to ascertained the gain analyses.
Tapping from your wealth of experience, what does it take to be a good metering engineer?
Engr. Gana: What it takes to be a good metering engineer is education and integrity because if one doesn’t have integrity, temptations are there but if you are dedicated and you have that integrity, you will be able to control yourself because good name is better than riches. So if they are able to control and update yourself on daily basis, because knowledge is a dynamic treasure, especially in an engineering field; so many things are changing on daily basis, the kind of EIC code you used yesterday are reviewed because of the technology so you should also be updating yourself on daily basis that is the only way you can be up-to-date in any society you find yourself, For one to be an excellent metering engineer, you have to be dedicated, technically sound in every aspect because when you talk of metering, its summarizes almost all part of engineering in power industry; because you need to ensure that transformers are balanced, customers load is balance for optimal performance of your meter and you need to ensure that the customers have effective earthing in their homes and industries that is the only way you show your competency. By so doing, the sky is the limit.
What is story behind Engr. Muhammad Aliyu Gana and what is the most difficult decision you have ever taken in any official capacity?
Engr. Gana: Engr. Muhammed Aliyu Gana is a person known to be a metering engineer, he is well known, what really gave me that edge over others is the commitment in having the competency as far as technical aspect is concern; that is one, and also integrity; no matter how good you are, if integrity is not there, the competency is as simple as zero. Try as much as possible to have integrity attached to your name, wherever you are, the recognition will be there and that is the only thing that I can say I observe that has given me edge over other.
As to the hard decision that I have ever taken so far; that was when I was before the forum and they were asking me to prove that a particular meter was actually performing accurately. At that moment, I looked at the scenario and also look at myself; many things were at stake, my professional competency, the Company’s reputation and of course the revenue. At that material time, I told myself that this is a case we cannot afford to lose; cogent and verifiable technical evidences and facts are all that is needed and that was what I presented to the panel. In such situation, competency was the most important asset and it wouldn’t have been possible for me to prove what I told them if one hasn’t the technical competency. There are two ways I chose to prove the accuracy of the meter in question even though there are many ways but I chose these two because they are not too technical for them to be convinced. It is just for me to assess the customers load over an integration period and whatever I compute actually became the same with what meter has registered and I also said the display are also measured so I used my clamp meter and measure and also the display analysis of the meter to confirm that what the meter is seeing is actually what the customer was taking.
It took me time to do that, but I was able to do it and also explained the process to the understanding of the members. After that, we went out and measure and shows exactly what I explained in the forum earlier. That day is the day I find it a little bit difficult; I was apprehensive at the initial stage that these people will box me into a corner, but by the special grace of God and with my fair knowledge of the system (competency), I was able to get over it.
What is your advice to upcoming Engineers who may wish to specialize in metering aspect of engineering?
Engr. Gana: My advice to them is to be up and doing in the sense that, test and calibration in metering is the sweetest part of knowledge of metering; before you get into any other thing, try to know test and calibration. If you are able to know the result of whatever test you carry out; is it routine test, sample testing, when and where do you carry out those tests, etc. When you are done with this stage, then you have finished having the knowledge of meter, whatever remains is just additional to what you already have. These are the only side I feel people neglect a lot and that is why if you don’t have the knowledge of testing and calibrations, there are levels when they ask you to explain certain aspect of metering, you find it very difficult to talk. So this is what I can advise because if you are able to get it right at test and calibration level, then every other one like installation, commissioning, checking of parameters is just as easy as abcd.
Quote: “For one to be an excellent metering engineer, you have to be dedicated, technically sound in every aspect because when you talk of metering, its summarizes almost all part of engineering in power industry; because you need to ensure that transformers are balanced, customers load is balance for optimal performance of your meter and you need to ensure that customers have effective earthing in their homes and industries; that is the only way you show your competency”.
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