Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has threatened to sanction distribution companies that failed to complete the migration of Token Identifier of Standard Transfer Specification Meters of their customers from Key Revision 1 to Key Revision 2 before July 31, 2024.
The NERC stated that at its second Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry stakeholders meeting of 2024 at the commission’s headquarters recently.
STS provides a secure message system to transmit information from a point-of-sale to a meter which helps to prevent fraudulent generation of tokens.
At the meeting, the stakeholders discussed the progress report on the STS migration of electricity meters and its approaching deadline.
“Sanctions would be meted out to DisCos that fail to complete STS meter migration of their customers after the commission’s July 31 deadline,” the NERC said in a statement on Tuesday.
The PUNCH reported that NERC had warned that all metered customers must get upgraded, as they would not be able to recharge their meters once the deadline for the meter upgrade elapses.
Similarly, customers whose meters are not eligible for migration to STS would need to have their meters replaced to avoid being ruled out of the system.
The NERC described the STS as a secure message system currently widely used in electricity metering and payment systems.
According to the regulator, the use of the STS standard prevents the fraudulent transfer of credit resulting from hit-and-miss attempts at entering the correct number into the meter; fraudulent generation of tokens from a stolen vending station; fraudulent generation of tokens from legitimate vending stations outside of the utility’s areas of operations; fraudulent reuse of tokens which have already been used and tampering of legitimate tokens that could result in the change of values issued on them.
The STS provides the facility of generating tokens, which can only be used by the intended meter and can only be used once by that meter.
In July, the commission ordered, “All distribution licensees shall ensure that the STS meters in their network are migrated from TID key revision 1 to TID key revision 2 on or before 31 July 2024.
“All distribution licensees shall upgrade their vending systems and secure module to be STS600-4-2 compliant before 31 July 2024.
“All distribution licensees are henceforth prohibited from installing meters that are not STS-TID key revision 2 compliant with effect from 6 July 2023.
“All distribution licensees shall ensure that STS-compliant meters that cannot be rolled over to STSTID key revision 2 are retrofitted and migrated by 31 July 2024.”
At the recent stakeholders meeting, the NERC said there was an update on the establishment of the Independent System Operator, the MAP Meter Refunds, and metering challenges.
“Of note were the DisCo presentations on the impact, challenges, opportunities and action plans for transitioning to a multi-tier market. The recent signing of the Electricity Act 2023 has unlocked significant opportunities for the private sector and state governments nationwide to participate more actively in the NESI. Considering this, some states have already begun to set up their own State Electricity Regulatory Commissions.
“The commission also provided an update on Zungeru Hydro Power Plant, noting that due to its coming on stream, all the water that had accumulated and was over-spilling is now being utilised for the benefit of the country,” the NERC said.
