ABUJA — With Nigeria's electricity distribution companies recording a ₦139.19 billion revenue loss in the fourth quarter of 2025 after industry-wide losses exceeded the regulatory benchmark, Netzence Sustainability Limited (Netzence) has developed a monitoring technology it says could help utilities find and mitigate suspected energy theft faster, tighten energy accounting and protect cash needed across the electricity value chain.
The Nigerian climate-technology company said the Netzence Energy Theft Monitoring Device, known as NETMoD, is designed to sit at strategic points on distribution networks, collect electrical data continuously and alert authorised utility teams when it detects abnormal patterns requiring investigation. NETMoD can cut off any customer associated with the abnormal pattern, depending on the utilities' preferences and network configurations. Netzence also plans to connect qualifying loss-reduction outcomes to a carbon-finance framework under which verified credits could be allocated to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and participating Distribution Companies (DisCos), subject to regulatory approval and an agreed benefit-sharing structure.
The timing speaks to a costly fault line in the power market. NERC's fourth-quarter 2025 report put the weighted average Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection loss across the eleven DisCos at 34.90 per cent, 14.36 percentage points above the 20.54 per cent target used in the 2025 tariff order. The gap translated to a cumulative ₦139.19 billion revenue loss, while only Eko DisCo beat its loss target during the quarter.
The regulator's report also showed that 6.97 million of 12.16 million active registered customers, or 57.27 per cent, were metered at the end of December 2025. It separately recorded ₦174.12 billion in billing losses, driven partly by commercial losses including energy theft and poor energy accounting, and called on DisCos to deploy initiatives and technologies to curb theft while improving metering, customer enumeration and network infrastructure.
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"Every unit of electricity that disappears between supply and legitimate billing weakens the entire market, from DisCo cash flow to upstream remittances and ultimately the quality of service customers receive," A.Prof Sadiq Sani, Founder & CEO at Netzence, said "NETMoD is designed to turn those blind spots into usable evidence, so utilities can intervene earlier, deploy field teams more intelligently and invest with greater precision."
According to the product's technical brief, NETMoD combines non-intrusive sensors, secure data transmission and central cloud analytics. Installed at utility-approved distribution poles, service distribution points or selected customer supply locations, it measures network conditions, builds a time-stamped operating history and flags patterns that depart from expected behaviour. The alert does not amount to a finding of theft; it provides evidence that trained personnel can use to decide where and how to investigate.
That distinction is commercially important. Loss-reduction campaigns have often depended on broad physical inspections, which can consume time, expose field workers to confrontation and produce uneven results. A data-led approach could allow a DisCo to rank high-risk locations, compare anomalies over time and direct scarce technical resources to points where the potential revenue impact is greatest. The same history could support feeder analysis, maintenance planning and assessment of whether an intervention actually changed network performance.
Netzence said the device is not a substitute for a revenue meter and does not require utilities to discard their transformers, relays, breakers or communications systems. It is intended as an additional visibility layer that can be introduced gradually as the industry continues its wider metering programme. That gives the technology a potential role both on urban feeders with substantial meter coverage and in areas where utilities still have limited intelligence beyond the customer meter.
The standard configuration monitors and reports without interrupting supply. An optional automatic cut-off function is reserved for a dedicated pole supply serving one identifiable customer, where disconnection would not affect others. On shared supplies, the system remains an alert and decision-support tool. Any disconnection would still have to follow the utility's approved procedure, applicable federal or state regulation, due process and customer-protection safeguards.
For DisCos, the immediate proposition is therefore less about gadgets than balance sheets: better energy accounting, quicker localisation of non-technical losses, more productive inspections and a stronger evidence base for revenue assurance. Because distribution collections feed obligations to other market participants, a sustained improvement could also support upstream remittances and free more capital for network reinforcement and service delivery. For regulators, aggregated and appropriately governed data could add an independent line of sight into loss-reduction performance without replacing statutory returns or inspections.
The investability of the solution will depend on proof. A controlled pilot on selected high-loss feeders and dedicated customer supplies would need to establish a baseline and report device availability, alert-to-investigation time, the proportion of alerts confirmed in the field, changes in unaccounted energy, revenue protected or recovered, false-positive rates and customer complaints. Cybersecurity, authorised data access, interoperability and maintenance costs would be equally important to utilities, lenders and development-finance partners considering a wider deployment.
The carbon proposition adds a second layer, but it is also the part that demands the greatest discipline. Netzence plans to integrate NETMoD with CloseCarbon, its carbon monitoring, reporting and verification platform. The company calls the underlying digital evidence unit a CloseCarbon Reduction Tonne, or CCRT. Where an intervention produces a real reduction in electricity waste or demand and that reduction can be converted into avoided greenhouse-gas emissions against an approved baseline, the evidence could support a recognised carbon-crediting process.
A detected bypass, an anomaly or a recovered bill would not, on its own, create a carbon credit. If the same electricity continues to be consumed and is merely billed correctly, there may be revenue recovery without an emissions reduction. To qualify, the climate outcome would have to be real, additional, measurable and independently verified, with an approved emissions methodology and safeguards against double counting. Nigeria's Carbon Market Activation Policy requires stringent monitoring, reporting and verification, third-party validation and verification, recognised standards and registration on a government-approved registry.
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"The first return must be operational: lower losses, stronger revenue assurance and better customer outcomes," Sani added. "Carbon value should only follow where the underlying emissions reduction is real, additional and independently verified. That discipline is what makes the proposition credible to regulators, investors and climate-finance partners."
Under Netzence's proposed model, carbon rights, credit ownership, allocation to NERC and participating DisCos, retirement arrangements and any use of proceeds would be documented before implementation. A clear governance framework would be especially important where the regulator is named as a beneficiary. The company said the purpose is to align incentives around verified performance, not to allow carbon revenue to replace the core utility economics of reducing losses.
The proposition also arrives as Nigeria's electricity market becomes more decentralised under the Electricity Act 2023 and regulatory oversight is progressively transferred to states. That means any scale-up may require coordination among NERC, relevant state regulators, DisCos and customer-protection institutions. It also places the technology within the wider Nigeria Energy Transition Plan, which identifies the power sector and better data as central to the country's pathway to net-zero emissions by 2060.
Netzence said it is seeking phased engagement with NERC, DisCos, relevant state electricity regulators, the Federal Ministry of Power, the National Council on Climate Change and development partners. The first test will not be the novelty of the device, but whether a pilot can show, feeder by feeder, that better visibility produces measurable loss reduction, stronger cash recovery, fairer enforcement and, only where the evidence supports it, credible climate value.
