Power Outage Persists As Discos Reject 17,657MW
Power generation on the national grid wobbled continuously in February as electricity distribution companies rejected a total of 17,657.19 megawatts of energy allocated to them by the Transmission Company of Nigeria between February 3 and February 23.
Latest industry statistics obtained from the Federal Ministry of Power and TCN in Abuja on Tuesday showed a wobbling national grid that persistently lost an average of about 1,000MW of electricity daily during the review period.
On February 1, for instance, the grid recorded a peak generation of 4,643.8MW, but this crashed by 1,346.6MW to hit a low of 3,297.2MW the next day.
Similar scenarios played out on other days of the month.
The transmission company, on several occasions, had blamed the instability of the grid on the continuous rejection of electricity allocation by power distributors, among other concerns.
TCN’s Managing Director, Usman Mohammed, had repeatedly called for the recapitalisation of Discos to enable the power firms boost their networks and distribute power efficiently.
Our correspondent gathered that power distributors were in the habit of rejecting electricity load on a daily basis, as it was observed that in February 2020 alone, they rejected over 17,657.19MW of electricity.
Although some of the power distributors accepted excess load from TCN (Abuja, Port Harcourt and Yola Discos), the quantum of excess power that they collected was insignificant when compared to what all 11 Discos collectively rejected during the period under review.
Findings showed that the three Discos only collected an excess load of 346.93MW between February 3 and February 23.
Taking a random pick, it was observed that on February 3, 6, 9, 11, and 15, the Discos cumulatively rejected 631.63MW, 553.4MW, 820.53MW, 757.67MW and 876.09MW of power respectively.
Also another random pick for February 16, 18, 20, 22 and 23 showed that the power firms collectively rejected 1,071.37MW, 857.99MW, 1,199.74MW, 1,005.64MW and 1,029.34MW, respectively.
The highest quantum of power rejected by the firms in a single day, during the 21-day period, was 1,199.74MW, as no Disco accepted excess load from TCN that day.
But power distributors had repeatedly argued that it was unprofitable to deposit electricity load in locations where consumers were unwilling to pay their bills.
According to them, this was among the reasons why power allocation from TCN was being rejected by Discos.
Meanwhile, it was further observed that during the review period, the grid recorded a highest peak power generation of 5,268.2MW, which was on February 26.
Also, the lowest quantum of power generated during the month of February was 3,171.1MW and it was recorded on February 28.
