Development of Communication Transaction Framework for Nigerian Electricity Distribution Companies

Nigeria has been faced with incessant power outages as a result of poor communication between the country’s electricity key players Generation, Transmission, Distribution, System Operator, Regulatory Agency and Customers. This paper focuses on development of an appropriate communication framework for effective information flow between Distribution companies (DISCOs) and other directly linked actors in the wake of system deregulation and unbundling of the Nigerian electricity industry. DISCOs was selected because its critical role as the major and visible interface between the end users and other major sectors of the industry. In this work, a secured portal with requisite database that facilitated effective transaction and situational awareness in the Nigerian electricity industry has been developed. Functional network architecture was adopted in building up a communication network in a Mesh format to give multi-access link to operators. Adobe Dreamweaver was adopted as design tool, PHP Hypertext Preprocessor as scripting language and MYSQL for database management. The portal built was encrypted to ensure system security. Results obtained showed secured and seamless flow of information. Validation test proved system authenticity as built portal was accessed with different web browsers and identified users.