Nigeria’s power sector on Friday could not generate fresh 3,299 megawatts (MW) of electricity for distribution to homes and offices in the country because it was restricted by a couple of operational constraints, records from the office of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, have disclosed.
According to the records provided yesterday in Abuja by the Advisory Power Team, Office of the Vice President, these constraints included inadequate gas supply to generation companies (GenCos), shortcomings in the transmission network, limitations in the distribution infrastructure of the distribution companies (DisCos), and water management related challenges at the hydropower stations.
The records explained that these limitations kept the amount of power generated and distributed to homes and offices in Nigeria at 3,971MW, in addition to preventing the power sector from earning as much as N1.584 billion in revenue.
It stated: “On January 25, 2018, average power sent out was 3,971MWh/hour (down by 115MWh/h from the previous day). 2302.8MW was not generated due to unavailability of gas. 417MW was not generated due to unavailability of transmission infrastructure, while 290MW was not generated due to high frequency resulting from the unavailability of distribution infrastructure.”
“290MW was not generated due to unavailability of water. The power sector lost an estimated N1,584,000,000 on January 25, 2018, due to insufficient gas supply, distribution infrastructure, and transmission infrastructure and water reserves,” it added.
The office equally notified that there was a repeated drop in power generation as a result of rising gas constraints.
Similarly, another data it released before that of Saturday, indicated that: “On January 23, 2018, average power sent out was 3,868MWh/hour (up by 156MWh/h from the previous day).”
It added in that record that: “2257MW was not generated due to unavailability of gas. 164MW was not generated due to unavailability of transmission infrastructure, while 291MW was not generated due to high frequency resulting from the unavailability of distribution infrastructure.”
“290MW was not generated due to unavailability of water. The power sector lost an estimated N1,441,000,000 on January 23, 2018, due to insufficient gas supply, distribution infrastructure, and transmission infrastructure and water reserves,” the record further explained.
Nigeria had in December 2017 recorded new power generation and transmission mark of 5,222.3MW which came few days after the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) reported that 5,155.9MW was generated and transmitted. However, since the last system collapses recorded by the TCN in the early days of January 2018, power generation has remained below 4000MW.
-Nigeria Electricity Hub
