Onitsha — Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has appraised its performance in the South-east zone of the country in the last two years and said that it has made an average of N90 million a month within the period from its 70,000 pre-paid metres installed mainly in the urban centres that make up the geo-political zone.

This amount, Mr Desmond Eboh, the Managing Director of SABRUD Consortium Nigeria Limited, the consultants to PHCN and operators of National pre-paid metering system, Enugu zone, said in a press briefing in Awka translated to about N2.16 billion generated within the period.

He said at the moment, the consortium has about 13 business units in the entire South East and has connected about seven-in Enugu, Onitsha, Awka, Ogidi, Awada, Abakpa and Nike from where it hoped to move into Owerri, Mbaise, Aba and Umuahia.

Apart from the 70,000 pre-paid metres installed in the zone since 2006 when it was contracted by the Federal Government to consult for PHCN, Eboh said an additional 60,000 pre-paid metres are ready for installation; adding that it has invested a lot on Information Technology (IT) and MTN small message service (SMS)/scratch card on-line service which will enable energy consumers install into their systems their cards for re-charging without necessarily going to PHCN office nearer them to do so.

He said a lot of progress is now being made by PHCN in revenue generation in the zone in the sense that customers are now paying for what they are actually consuming quite unlike in the past when they were over-billed for epileptic or non existent service, adding that the consortium has been able to normalise power/energy consumption and lost customers wooed back.

Although the overall objective of pre-paid metering system he said is to have improvement in revenue generation, and manage energy from the demand and supply perspectives, but nonetheless said there was going to be better management of energy if transformers are safe.

The pre-paid metering system he insisted puts the customer in charge of his budget and power consumption, adding that in the last two years, complaints of excessive billing, incessant disconnection of customers' electric cables, and the like have become a thing of the past.