Lagos plans local production of one million electricity meters
LAGOS STATE GOVERNMENT is seeking partnerships that will deliver the local production of between 600,000 and 1 million electricity meters to meet the needs of citizens and address challenges associated with estimated billing.
Olalere Odusote, commissioner for energy and mineral resources, states that the Eko Innovation Centre (with the ministry of energy and mineral resources as title sponsors) is promoting efforts to provide affordable meters to the populace by facilitating a meter design Hackathon (a bidding competition) to improve energy distribution, monitoring and preventing revenue leakage.
“On the campaign trail there were two big issues that Lagosians complained the most about; it was traffic and transportation and lack of constant supply of electricity. So, instead of putting up big electricity projects that may or may not be completed, we decided to target where the problems are, to invest in those areas because our job is to solve problems. What the governor has said in his wisdom is that as much as possible we should meter all Lagosians over the next four years,” Odusote says.
The programme that will see design teams produce hardware and software designs for meters has kindled the interest of local engineers, bankers and local meter assembling firms who are now in talks with the government on how to scale scheme and replicate it across Nigeria.
The combined winning team comprising software and hardware design teams will be awarded N7 million and a percentage of the intellectual property royalties from the winning solution.
“Since we opened the meter portal, we have received a total of 51 hardware teams that have registered and 58 software teams have registered to participate in the hackathon. Eleven teams have submitted their prototype designs and 9 teams on the software side have submitted their designs,” the commissioner states.
The initial plan of the scheme was to design a prototype that would be taken to China to mass-produce and eventually develop capacity locally to scale production across Nigeria, but the Covid-19 has compelled the government to boldly seek initiatives to manufacture locally, he notes.