By MKPE ABANG, in Cape Town, South Africa
After overtaking all to become the world’s leading information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, Huawei is taking the world by storm in the energy and power sector with cutting edge solutions that are driving down losses and delivering high profits.
In Nigeria, a country notorious for poor electricity supply from the public grid, Huawei’s Smart Grid solution is helping Ikeja Electric, a leading privately held electricity distribution company operating in the Lagos metropolis, to achieve its aim of reducing energy losses by up to 35 per cent.
Ikeja Electric sees its target of reducing energy losses, which the company said stood at 46 per cent when the current holding company of the power firm, Sahara Group, took over, to 11 per cent in five years, coming to fruition given the visible outcomes and results since deploying Huawei’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution.
Speaking at the African Utility Week 2017 (AUW2017) in Cape Town, South Africa, which held over May 16 to 18, chief executive officer of Ikeja Electric, Mr. Anthony Youdeowei, said of the Huawei’s Intelligent Meter Reading solution, which provides reliable technical support for energy conservation and intelligent and modern management:
“We have not only improved the efficiency of our operations and management but also promoted the overall intelligent construction of Nigeria’s electric power industry and enhanced our international competency.”
Giving fuller testimony to the benefits Ikeja Electric is driving by deploying the Huawei AMI solution during the Fifth Huawei Power Summit with Partners during the AUW2017, Mr. Victor Eribake, Business Leader of Sahara Power Group, said on taking over Ikeja Electric after privatisation was consummated, “we discovered some operations gaps including technical, commercial and financial challenges, and we looked at it that as a global company that believes in international best practices, we need to replicate our achievements in the oil & gas industry.”
With that in mind, Eribake said after analysing the challenges besetting Ikeja Electric, the holding company discovered paramount among the problems “was the Aggregate Technical, Commercial, and Collections (ATC&C) Loss level, which was 46 per cent as at take-over” as well as the collection efficiency which was also low at the time.
“And the quality of the workforce was not so encouraging as a result of statutory exit that left little or no room for replacement. Likewise funding was not adequate because the company was in the hands of government for so many years,” he explained.
Determined to increase efficiency by reducing losses, Eribake said the company deployed the Huawei AMI solution as a major step in the immediate action plan.
“One of the reasons why we went into Huawei AMI solution, that is smart metering, is because we would like to have a system that will enable us to do effective energy accounting and auditing across our energy flow, brought from the trading point to the last customers.
“Before now we were having some meters in our system; but those meters were predominantly uni-directional in operation. So, we wanted to have the type of meter that will be able to communicate with us and collect data from the field, hence we decided on smart meter. The same way, smart meters will not be able to operate on their own without associated information technology and that was where the AMI system came in. And also for customer relationship management that we wanted to improve our interaction with our customers; we wanted our customers to be satisfied with our service delivery,” he explained.
Speaking further he said:
“Before the take-over there were billing problems, people complaining about inaccurate billing; therefore, we needed a system that will be able to assist us in that area too. And, readily the AMI system offers this service; the same thing on asset management and business efficiency.”
To drive that plan to execution the company began by installing 600,000 meters of which total connected stood at 592,000 new meters with the difference being allowance made for any faulty or burnt meters.
With the aggregate technical, commercial and collection loss being very high at 46 per cent, the company’s target, he said, is to reduce this loss level to 11 per cent over a five-year period.
“So the AMI system has been of tremendous assistance in all these areas of objective,” he commented.
But the deployment of the Huawei AMI solution did not come without initial hurdle for Ikeja Electric, although such was easily overcome, explains Eribake:
“When we embarked on this project some of our customers, when they heard of smart meters, their understanding was that the distribution company wanted to outsmart them, wanted to cheat them. So this nearly created a kind of friction initially. But as a result of engagement, our customers bought into it.”
Enumerating some of the advantages of the Huawei AMI solution, Eribake stated:
“There are numerous benefits associated with the AMI system; and factually speaking, Ikeja Electic has benefited from the deployment of this AMI system. We have been able to derive increase in customer population, because as a result of the project we are able to capture more customers, those who were using energy freely (energy theft).
“Likewise, we have witnessed improved bill collection rate. Also, energy loss has decreased on all those distribution transformers that we have metered; because customers now decided whether to use energy wisely or just to be consuming energy because it is going to have effect on their purse.
“So we have been able to reduce energy loss, and as a result, those who are engineers will agree that the magnitude of current that you are drawing on any electrical equipment will determine the loss, especially transformers, because there are losses that are constant. So it has helped us to reduce energy loss, not only commercial loss. And revenue has also increased significantly.”
Eribake also said that the implementation of the AMI system has helped to mitigate the challenge of meter tampering, because given its smart architecture, “once a customer tampers with a smart meter, the smart meter will communicate with the Data Concentrator Unit, and the DCU will pass the information to the head end unit, and the head end system will allow the operator to view it from the customer information system.”
Global testimonials
It was not just Ikeja Electric from Nigeria that gave testimonial to the prowess of the Huawei smart grids. Eskom, Africa’s largest electric power company, has already committed to deploying the Huawei smart grid.
Sean Maritz, Chief Information Officer of Eskom, speaking at the event, said “Eskom’s 2030 vision is to use Smart Grid and digital technologies to achieve operational efficiency, and a reliable and secure way of providing electricity. Huawei is an important player in the area of Smart Grids and we believe that our collaboration will advance innovation to tackle future energy challenges.”
“The use of Smart Grids is being unfolded. Leveraging Huawei’s leading ICT, we have developed major solutions together with our partners which cover all aspects of the electric power industry and the Power Cloud solution.
“The application of IoT and cloud computing will help power companies enhance operational efficiency and accelerate innovations,” commented Jerry Ji, President of Energy Sector, Huawei Enterprise Business Group.
“In line with Huawei’s ‘platform + ecosystem’ strategy, we’re working with strategic partners such as State Grid Information and Telecommunication Technology Company of China, SAP, Accenture, T-System and Tech Mahindra, to build an open and win-win ecosystem for the electric power industry. In addition, Huawei has helped over 170 electric power customers improve their energy management efficiency and ensure safe and reliable operations of grids, to light up and enrich the modern society, and to promote the utilisation of renewable energy resources.”
To help electric power companies in South Africa accelerate their digital transformation, Huawei and T-systems South Africa launched the Electric Power Industry Cloud solution to offer on-demand cloud services at the Summit. As an extension of the Open Telekom Cloud, this solution provides pay-as-you-use industrial applications to greatly lower the thresholds of enterprises’ deployment of digital services.
Jiten Lala, from T-Systems, said: “T-Systems is focused on providing simple, secure and affordable cloud services to help customers transform and succeed. The joint Electric Power Industry Cloud solution will bring a new innovative experience to the local electric power market and help customers solve challenges often faced during the deployment of new digital services, such as insufficient investment and lack of skills and ICT infrastructure. Moreover, this solution can free customers from worrying about business cases and enable customers to use affordable digital services.”
In Thailand, Huawei provided a Fully-Connected Power Grid solution to help the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) build a secure high-speed production network. It also jointly built the Electricity Innovation Centre with PEA.
In South America, Huawei’s IP Hard Pipe solution helped EPM, the largest public enterprise in Colombia, to achieve reliable production services and move towards unified O&M. Huawei has worked with partners from the electric power industry to launch over 20 innovative solutions and more than 50 solutions have completed integration tests. Huawei will continue to team up with more partners to promote the development of Smart Grids in the future