Urge FG to Tackle Transmission Challenges

In another development, the Discos have also identified low power transmission caused by the persistent directives from the National Control Centre (NCC) at Osogbo in Osun State, asking the Gencos to generate electricity below optimal level as a major hindrance to the nation’s drive towards efficient power supply.

The Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, ANED, Mr. Sunday Oduntan, said in Lagos at the weekend that while the Discos are not interested in any further controversies in the power sector, operators would continue to demand for enough power supply for Nigerians.

“We want Nigerians to know that the current distribution capacity of all the 11 Discos is 6,288MW, according to the TCN stress test that was conducted in 2015.

“This is not our figure; this is the figure from the TCN side. Now what we are getting from them is far too low than what we are supposed to be getting,” Oduntan said.

The Gencos last week threatened to shut down their plants over repeated directives by the NCC to generate below optimal level.

According to Ogaji, the Gencos were facing lower capacity utilisation by operating their plants far from the baseline settings to as low as about 50 per cent of total available power capacity.

Using the month of April as a case study, Ogaji disclosed that on a daily basis, the Gencos had an average capacity of 7,484MW, while the TCN transmitted only an average of 3,985 MW, about 53 per cent of the available capacity.

For Oduntan, the implication of this trend in power generation is that Discos “are not able to supply enough power to (our) customers and we are now making Nigerians to be aware that shortage of power supply or lack of power is due to TCN constraints and persistent outages from the TCN interface and the Gencos have actually confirmed that.”

Oduntan urged the federal government to urgently address the issue of transmission bottlenecks in the power sector, noting that the development is impacting negatively on the Discos’ business, in particular and Nigerians in general.

“What we are currently having is a suppressed tariff regime that is not cost reflective - a tariff that was calculated on the wrong assumption that by 2018 we would be generating over 7,000 MW. The absence of that level of generation means that we are having more shortfalls in the market. The situation is now far worse when we are getting far lower than expected from TCN,” Oduntan explained.