How to stop prepaid electricity eating your money

A ₦5,000 token on Tuesday. Another ₦3,000 when the meter beeps on Sunday night. A third before the weekend, because the freezer is full. No single token feels like a big bill, and by the end of the month they have taken a large share of the money without anyone deciding how much.

That's the trouble with prepaid light. It's a monthly cost paid in small pieces, so nobody ever decides how much it should get in a month. It takes whatever the meter asks for. The fix is to give it a monthly amount, priced at your band's rate, and buy on a schedule instead of when the meter beeps. This page builds on how to control your spending and looks at what's different for prepaid electricity, with a short note on data at the end.

Your band sets the price of every unit

Before you can give light a monthly amount, you need its price, and that depends on your band. Bands follow the hours of supply your feeder, the line that supplies your area, is meant to give, and your meter counts units (1 unit = 1 kWh). NERC's September 2026 order for AEDC's customers in the FCT and Nasarawa keeps Band A at ₦209.50 per kWh, the rate since July 2024, with Bands B to E at their December 2022 levels.^[1]

AEDC's prices in the FCT and Nasarawa from 1 September 2026, for ordinary home connections, before VAT. The last column divides ₦10,000 by the price; your token's receipt shows the units you actually get.

Band	Minimum supply a day	Price per kWh, before VAT	₦10,000 ÷ price
A	20 hours	₦209.50	48 kWh
B	16 hours	₦63.35	158 kWh
C	12 hours	₦51.79	193 kWh
D	8 hours	₦33.95	295 kWh
E	4 hours	₦32.88	304 kWh

The table covers AEDC's area only. Lagos is one of 16 states that now regulate their own electricity markets, so its commission sets its own tariffs.^[2] Wherever you are, your own price is easy to find: divide a recent token's amount by the units it added.

The difference between bands is large. At AEDC's prices, Band A buys less than a third of the units Band B buys with the same money. In September 2026, residents of Akowonjo in Lagos protested after their area was moved from Band B to Band A; one told Vanguard that ₦5,000 now bought her 22 units, where it used to buy 74.^[3]

Bands also move. NERC's order for AEDC says a Band A feeder that misses its committed hours for seven days in a row is downgraded automatically, and requires AEDC to publish each Band A feeder's seven-day average hours every day.^[1] Areas are moved up too, as Akowonjo was. When your band moves, so does what your home needs each month.

Why prepaid light eats your money in pieces

The price explains what a month should cost. The way tokens are bought explains why it ends up costing more, or costing whatever happens to be in your account.

Tokens are bought when the units run out, from whatever money is there. The meter beeps, and the token comes out of food or transport money. Because no single token looks big, the month's total is never seen in one place. Buying also tends to follow income: in eleven years of Cape Town prepaid meter data, poorer households bought electricity more often, in smaller amounts, and most often on payday.^[4]

The meter doesn't help, because it shows units left, not days left. A big token bought on payday gives no warning until it's nearly gone. If it runs out on the 18th, you find out on the 18th, and the rest of the month is bought with money meant for something else.

Yet paying upfront can make people more careful, once the price is in view. When Cape Town households moved from monthly bills to prepaid meters, their electricity use fell by 14%, partly because they became more sensitive to the price of each unit.^[5]

What works, with or without Delight

1. Find your price per unit. Your DisCo can confirm your band; your real price is a token's amount divided by the units it added.
2. Measure a week with your usual hours of light. Write down the units on your meter at the same time each day for seven days. The daily drop is your real use, and leaving one appliance off for a day shows its share.
3. Price the month now, and set the money aside when you're paid. Multiply a week's units by your price, then by four or five, or add up last month's tokens. Put that amount aside before anything else can spend it.
4. Buy on a schedule, not when the meter beeps. One token a week, on the same day, for a usual week's amount. If the units run out early, you learn it in the first week, while most of the month's money is still there.
5. Redo the sum when your band or tariff changes. At AEDC's prices, a move from Band B to Band A cuts what your money buys to less than a third.
6. Give data one monthly plan, bought on payday. Data is the other small bill paid in pieces. Size the plan from last month's use and buy any extra bundle from the same money, so you see what data costs in a month.

Set it up in Delight

An illustration for a Band A home in AEDC's area that needs a ₦5,000 token a week and a ₦5,000 data plan a month. Use your own figures.

Budget	Amount a month	How it's paid
Electricity	₦25,000	A ₦5,000 token every Saturday, by automation
Data	₦5,000	One plan on payday, bought from Data

Electricity holds five tokens, because some months have five Saturdays. In a four-Saturday month, ₦5,000 is left, and with Roll over to next period it stays; when your next pay arrives, auto-fund adds ₦20,000 instead of ₦25,000, because a budget can't hold more than its amount.

1. Create a group called Home Bills with two sub-budgets, Electricity and Data, repeating monthly. When asked What day should this budget renew?, choose your payday. Set each amount from your sums and choose Roll over to next period for leftovers.
2. Let payday fill them. Make sure Auto-fund is on for each, then open a budget's menu, tap Funding priority and put them after rent. When money arrives in your wallet, auto-fund fills each budget to its full amount, in that order.
3. Buy your first token. On Home, tap Bills & Utilities, choose Electricity and pick the Electricity budget. Select your DisCo under Electricity Provider, enter your Meter Number, choose Prepaid, enter the amount and give the meter a name, such as Home Meter. Delight checks the meter number before it pays.
4. Load the token. When the purchase goes through, Delight sends Electricity token ready. Open the payment, find the token under Token generated, and type it into your meter.
5. Automate the weekly token. Open the Electricity budget, tap Automate, give the automation a name and choose Airtime & bills. Enter the week's amount, pick Home Meter from Your saved billers and set the first date and time. Tick Make Recurrent and choose Weekly on Saturday under Repeat Pattern. Choose Yes, request approval if you want to confirm each token.
6. If you need an extra token mid-week, pay it from another budget. Choose that budget under Select budget to spend from, so Electricity still covers Saturday's token. If extra tokens keep happening, raise Electricity's amount with Edit budget for the months ahead.
7. Buy data from the Data budget. In Bills & Utilities, data is under Internet. Buy the month's plan from Data on payday, and any extra bundle from the same budget.
8. When your band changes, change both amounts. Raise Electricity's amount under Edit budget. Then open the automation's menu, choose Automation settings and then Recipients, enter the new weekly amount and tap Save.

Delight adds no charge to electricity, data or airtime payments, including automated ones.