The lack of materials and personnel in the billing area of the Eastern Electricity Distributor (Edeeast) has generated an increase in estimated billing, that is, a group of customers is not billed for actual consumption but for another amount.
The situation is contained in an internal report, prepared by personnel of said public company and leaked to Free Journalin which it is noted that “real billing (billing that reflects the meter reading) has been decreasing progressively and alarmingly.”
“The amount of estimated supplies has tripled, currently reaching alarming levels and degrading the actual (measured) turnover to unusually low values (around 60%). Even so, the biggest problem is that, if these provisions are not changed, in a few months the estimated billing will be higher than the real one,” the document warns.
This specifies that from 2021 to date, the billing of estimated customers has increased from 12 to 40 GWh per month, approximately.
It also indicates that the lack of meters has caused a considerable increase in direct connection customers, in quantity and consumption, since, not being metered, “they make irrational use of energy”, and they cannot be billed for their real consumption, going from 12 to 37 GWh per month in these types of customers.
As of June this year, Edeeast it had 164,325 customers without a meter, a number greater than those of Edesur (74,880) and Edenorte (145,733). Those invoiced totaled 717,255, according to statistics from the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
According to the report of Edeeastthe actual billing in August 2021 was 202 GWh and in August 2022 it fell to 155.4 GWh, “which represents a decrease of 23%, this caused by the increase in direct connections and estimated supplies”.
“Because this process was carried out automatically, they were being billed as real clients that had to be estimated because they had measurement problems; this caused a return of the energy billed estimated in previous months and a credit to customers for several future months”, says the report.
Proposals proposed but not yet executed are highlighted, such as regulating more than 40,000 supplies that have a real reading and moving to direct connection en masse to some 60,000 supplies in which the meter is not found, is damaged or has another situation.
As of June 2022, Edeeast had an accumulated invoiced amount to residential customers of 4,401.3 million pesos and collected 4,013.4 million pesos, for 91.2% collectability. The percentage of collection from commercial customers was 88%, according to a report from Energy and Mines.
Billing of minutes
In the internal report of Edeeast It is considered important to execute a Real Billing Stabilization Plan, presented by an external consultant, “because the combination of a series of changes in the parameterization of billing anomalies and the billing processes of Edeeast in the middle of 2021, it has had very negative consequences for the company.”
The analysis also indicates that, as a result of a plan to increase the collection of bills, in coordination with the authorities of the Unified Council of Electricity Distribution Companies (CUED), the billing of bills of intentional irregularity was approved, a decision that improved loss percentage indicator, steadily reducing it from 51.05% to 44.19% from August 2021 to August 2022, respectively.
Energy loss represents the difference between the amount of electricity that enters the network and that which is delivered for final consumption.
The Technical Table for the Analysis of Losses of Edeeast recommends that the general management not consider in the percentage indicator of losses the invoicing of energy recovered due to irregularity acts as of August 2022 and that the official percentage of losses as of last month be reported at 54.89%. Free Journal requested a statement from Edeeast about the report, but as of press time it had not been sent.
