Electricity Bill & Units Calculator Nigeria 2026 (NERC Band A–E Rates)

Every household and business connected to the national grid in Nigeria pays for electricity under a framework set by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, commonly known by its acronym NERC. Since April 2024, that framework has operated as the Service-Based Tariff, or SBT, a system that ties the price a customer pays per kilowatt-hour directly to the number of hours of electricity supply their feeder actually delivers. This calculator exists to take the guesswork out of that system, letting you either work out what a given amount of energy consumption will cost, or flip the question around and see how many units a fixed amount of money in Naira will buy you at the vending point.

The Service-Based Tariff sorts every connected customer into one of five bands, labelled A through E, based on the average number of hours of supply their local feeder receives, measured by the distribution company, or DisCo, over a reporting period. Band A customers receive a guaranteed minimum of twenty hours of electricity a day and pay the highest, most cost-reflective rate, currently in the region of two hundred and nine to two hundred and twenty-five Naira per kilowatt-hour depending on the DisCo, since a handful of distributors such as Ikeja Electric and Eko Electricity Distribution Company have applied downward adjustments to their own Band A feeders relative to the ceiling NERC approved. Band B customers get sixteen to twenty hours of supply, Band C between twelve and sixteen hours, Band D between eight and twelve hours, and Band E fewer than eight hours a day. Bands B through E remain heavily subsidised by the federal government and have stayed close to fifty to seventy Naira per kilowatt-hour for an extended period, since the policy intent behind the SBT was to protect lower-reliability, largely residential customers from the full cost-reflective price while asking better-served, higher-consuming Band A customers to shoulder a price that reflects the true cost of generating and distributing the power they use.

Working out a bill from a known number of units consumed is straightforward in principle. You multiply the number of kilowatt-hours used by the rate that applies to your band and your DisCo, which gives you the energy charge. Many postpaid and estate-metered customers also have a fixed or service charge added on top, covering costs unrelated to actual consumption, though the exact figure varies by customer class and DisCo, and this calculator lets you toggle a typical residential estimate on or off since not every account carries one. Once the energy charge and any fixed charge are added together to produce a subtotal, Value Added Tax at the statutory rate of seven and a half percent, as set out under the VAT Act as amended by the Finance Act, is applied on top to arrive at the final amount payable. This is the same VAT rate applied across most goods and services in Nigeria, and electricity is not exempt from it.

The more common question for prepaid customers, who make up the overwhelming majority of metered electricity users in the country, runs in the opposite direction: given that you are about to buy ten thousand Naira of credit, how many units will actually land on your meter? Vending platforms typically quote a price that already has VAT folded in, so this calculator backs the seven and a half percent tax out of your amount first to get the underlying energy value, then divides that by your band's per-kilowatt-hour rate to give an effective unit count. We also show a simpler gross estimate that skips the VAT adjustment, since some DisCo vending apps present figures slightly differently, and it is useful to see both so you are not caught off guard by a difference between what an app estimates and what actually appears on your meter after a top-up.

It's worth being clear-eyed about the limits of any calculator like this one. Tariffs are reviewed periodically by NERC, sometimes in response to shifts in gas prices, inflation, or the Naira-to-Dollar exchange rate, since a meaningful share of Nigeria's generation cost is dollar-denominated. A distribution company can also apply a small downward variation to its own Band A rate relative to the NERC ceiling, as both Ikeja Electric and Eko Electricity have done in the past. None of that shows up automatically here, and this tool has no live connection to any DisCo billing system, so it cannot account for arrears, debt recovery charges, estate or community meter allocations, or a band reclassification that hasn't yet been reflected in public reporting. Before making a financial decision based on any number this calculator produces, check your own most recent bill, meter receipt, or your DisCo's official portal or customer care line, and use your account or meter number to confirm exactly which band your feeder currently sits in. Bands are assigned at the feeder level, not the individual meter, which is why two houses on the same street can occasionally sit in different bands depending on which transformer and feeder actually serves them.