Nationwide Darkness Looms As NCC Directs Generation Firms To Shut Down

There seem not to be respite in the power sector as the National Control Center(NCC), Osogbo, Osun state, responsible for all Transmission Company of Nigeria(TCN) grid operations monitoring and control within the transmission network, yesterday, instructed power generation companies to shut down from 12 midnight till now.

NATIONAL ECONOMY findings reveal that the directive became necessary following load rejection by Distribution Companies(DisCos).

Presently, many parts of Lagos suffered outage since yesterday.

Our sources, within the DisCos blamed the outage to declining capacity from GenCos due to gas supply constraints.

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While Eko Electricity Distribution Company(EKEDC) distanced itself from the situation and declined to comment Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company(IE) spokesman, Felix Ofulue could not be immediately reached.

However, MD/CEO of Association of Power Generation Companies(APGC), Dr. Joy Ogaji, told our correspondent that the DisCos are rejecting load which prompted the NCC directive as generated power is no longer utilised.

NATIONAL ECONOMY reports that power sector data suggests 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.