Endless Crisis in the Power Sector
It’s unbelievable. Power generation plants across the country are being forced to operate below their optimal capacity, so says the electricity generation companies. This is happening amid dwindling supply to residential and industrial consumers. The generating firms raised this same alarm last year and there was no positive response from the government and its regulatory agencies.
The Executive Secretary, Association of Power Generation Companies, the umbrella body for the Gencos, Dr Joy Ogaji, stated: “Specifically, generation companies are pinned down by some operational impediments. The frequency of instructions to either increase load or decrease load (ramp up and ramp down) and, in some cases, shut down, have induced damaging stresses to the components of the machines. These instructions, reflective of the grid behaviour, are subjecting key electrical components of the power plants to operational stresses.”
“Some of the machines, for instance, with 145MW capacity, are subjected by the NCC to operate at 70MW, if not less on daily average, which constitutes 50 per cent base load value. Experts had prescribed solutions such as procurement of regulating and spinning reserve as well as tools to be developed to manage the grid to the mandatory free governor mode. The TCN has refused to put these in place; instead, it is forcing the Gencos to operate outside factory capability.”
According to the APGC spokesperson, all the thermal and hydro power plants are designed to operate optimally and efficiently at base load.
“Operating these plants far away from their base load implies a reduction in efficiency or, in other words, an increase in consumption of gas for the thermal plants by as much as 15 to 20 per cent (extra cost not recognised by the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc nor captured in the Multi-Year Tariff Order),” she stated.
The weakest links in the electricity chain remain the TCN and the distribution firms. Our lethargic TCN is controlled by a government that has failed to turn around the firm. On the other hand, the distribution companies have remained unruly because the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission lacks the capacity to discipline them. For now, Nigerians will continue to wallow in darkness while the shenanigans in the electricity chain continue.