Over 40 percent of the power generation plants in the Nigeria Supply Industry (NESI) have been shut down because of low demand for electricity by the distribution companies.
There are 28 power generating plants in the nation’s electricity market. 85 percent of the power generated in Nigeria is from gas fired plants.
Three are hydros (Kainji, Jebba and Shiroro).
Seven of the plants are the legacy power stations that were privatised of which eight are thermal and gas, while the three tiers of government own 10 Independent Power Power Plants.
General Manager, System Operator (SO), Mr. Emmanuel Umoh, broke the news to reporters during a training workshop in Shiroro Hydroelectric Power Plant, Shiroro in Niger State.
According to him, the NESI allocates about 260mw to 300mw daily to Republic of Benin and 120mw to 130mw to Niger Republic.
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The load rejection of load, according to him, is responsible for instability of the grid as the SO of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) always compels the generating firms to shutdown operations for unutilised load to avoid high voltage and damage to transmission transformers and system collapse.
The SO, operating from the National Control Center in Oshogbo, Osun State usually directs the switch off further generation once the frequency is out of the range of 49.75 to 50.05Hz.
Umoh also noted that although the transmission capacity is now over 9,000mw, the DisCos are not ready to pick the load.
He said the TCN now relies of whatever load the DisCos demand to direct generation companies’ production to avoid waste since Nigeria cannot store electricity.
He noted that there is a new technology for Energy Storage System (ESS) that is yet to take effective useage globally. Umoh said that the ESS may not be useful in the Nigeria situation because there is no idea of when the demand would increase.
He disclosed that the DisCos have the propensity of supplying their customers from the 33Kv lines that are 800 in the country.
The lines, he said, “are not healthy enough,” for such usage.
He also revealed that the power allocated to the eligible customers is an “exempted load” which is not fixed but a percentage of the generated power.
In terms of load rejection, he said that Enugu, Port Harcourt and Benin distribution companies, are worst off in term of load rejection.
He added that the “DisCos have the capacity to take more load but for commercial reasons they don’t do so.”
Umoh said that the TCN compiles DisCos load rejection data and sends it to the Federal Ministry of Power and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission for action.
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