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Electricity: Market operator insists on integrity of settlement statements

By on December 3, 2014

The Operator of Nigerian Electricity Market (ONEM), also called the Market Operator (MO) has said the integrity of information provided by various participants in the Nigerian electricity supply industry must be credible to avoid imbalances in the settlement statements sent by it to them (participants).

Executive Director of MO, Mrs. Ngozi Osuhor stated at the recent workshop to educate participants on activities the ONEM that in as much as the market operator has handed over all trading meters to participants, it expects to be notified before any meter is tampered with by participants.

She said the request was necessary to ensure that data integrity from the meters are maintained in the computation of settlement statements.

The market operator also informed the participants that its recent upgrade of its power collect system to include Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) that enable acquisition of hourly meter reading was to the Market Operator gain baseline position for verification of field data to ensure accuracy of the settlement statements.

While stating that for the Nigerian electricity market to achieve dynamic equilibrium in trading within the Transitional Electricity Market (TEM), Osuhor stated that participants in the electricity value chain must be willing to transparently abide by all rules which interplay in the system.

She said: “All participants are advised to play by the rules of the market in the privatised stage, the Market Operator has a role to educate the market.  This education of the market is for the operators in the market.
So, we have to talk to generation companies, transmission company and the distribution companies. They are basically our customers, as far as the electricity market is concerned.”

Osuhor further said: “We bring them together and discuss topical issues, explain things to them, and give them the opportunity to ask questions and clarifications made.

Moving forward, we will have a desk for the next two days so that if there are issues that they want discussed, we will handle all.  If we don’t do this, there is ignorance and the market would be slowed down. So, we expect them to talk to us at for a like this.”

On the MO’s preparedness for TEM, Osuhor noted that: “The Transitional Electricity Market is a stage of market that requires a declaration, a statement that must be made by the Minister of Power. Except that statement is made, we cannot enter TEM. What we are doing is preparatory. We are doing pre-transition.

We are doing as much as we can to prepare the market, so that when it gets to TEM, it would be a smooth market. Of course, TEM is contract based. There is going to be activation of contracts and everybody is going to work according to contracts.”
“For now, we are not working according to contracts yet. We are in a pre-transition stage. What that means is that a lot of the conditions are supposed to be able to manage the market.

We are looking at the market rules here. We are looking at the grid codes. These are documents that are in the market. We are looking at all of them and making sure everybody understands them correctly.  Then of course, we have a settlement platform. We have to make sure that everybody understands the way the bills are prepared and be sure they understand what they should pay and why they should pay such.  Issues like that are to be tackled here,” she added.

 

[ThisDay]