Nigeria’s energy crisis is far from over, as the National Grid power supply fell by 25.3 percent to 3,320.70 Megawatts yesterday from 4,446.02MW recorded a week ago.
Investigations revealed that as at 5pm, yesterday, 19 power generation companies were on the grid. The largest electricity supplier being Egbin Power with 544MW, followed by Azura-Edo IPP with 426MW and Delta Power with 367MW. The least suppliers were Omoku (Gas) with 46.20MW and Paras Energy with 46.80MW.
The data further revealed that the eleven electricity distribution companies were willing to take only 2,949.02MW, leaving 371.68MW unallocated.
Last Thursday, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) released the latest adjustment to electricity tariff with some customers facing about 12 percent rise in price.
In spite of the new rate, the DisCos have continued to underperform with continuing load rejection.
But the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) blamed the System Operator, a unit at the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), for the low supply by the DisCos.
ANED stated that the loads nominated by the DisCos were more than what they were getting from the national grid.
A statement by ANED’s Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, Barrister Sunday Oduntan stated that “There were significant periods of low or reduced energy supply nationwide, leading up to the month of April, as a result of the various factors stated by the Minister of Power, Engr. Abubakar Aliyu, in March of this year. As such, the energy supplied to the distribution end of the value chain has been constrained”.
Oduntan added that the “DisCos remain committed to continually improving on electricity supply services based on the energy that is made available to them on the grid on a daily basis. Additionally, we continue to believe that the challenges of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) can best be resolved with collaboration and alignment of all the interests of the stakeholders versus finger pointing”.
In order to ensure more power supply to high end users by utilising spare capacity, NERC disclosed at the weekend that the power generation companies were re-negotiating the terms for contracted capacity with the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc.
