Nigerian govt directs GenCos to reduce power generation
The National Control Centre (NCC) on Tuesday instructed some power generation companies to reduce their generation to the national grid from 12 midnight.
THE NCC in Osogbo, Osun state, is responsible for all Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) grid operations monitoring and control within the transmission network.
Leadership newspaper reported that the directive became necessary following load rejection by Distribution Companies (DisCos).
Presently, many parts of Lagos have suffered power outage since Tuesday.
Confirming this development, the managing director/CEO of Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), Dr. Joy Ogaji, was quoted to have said that the NCC had directed some generation companies to reduce their generation because of too much frequency.
According to her, high frequency means that the electricity generated by the GenCos is much more than what can be taken by the distribution companies. So, while generation is high, the distribution infrastructure to get the power to the consumers is grossly inadequate, hence the disconnect.
Ogaji decried that such directives from the NCC had become a regular occurrence for the GenCos, which are forced to cut back on their generation despite inadequate supply of electricity to consumers across the country.
DisCos, he said, are rejecting load which prompted the NCC directive as generated power is no longer utilised
The report said sources within the DisCos blame the outage on declining capacity from GenCos due to gas supply constraints.
Leadership reports that power sector data suggest that Nigeria has just about 13,000 MW of installed generation capacity, largely dependent on hydropower (water) and thermal (gas) power sources distributed into 12.5 per cent and 87.5 per cent respectively for both sources.
However, of this figure, for years, only 3,500MW to 5,000MW is typically available for onward transmission to the final consumer, with the extensive losses attributable to weak infrastructure and a high occurrence of significant technical and non-technical challenges.
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