Electricity distribution companies (Discos) have rejected 8,734.39 megawatts from Gencos thereby rendering the 13 of Nigeria’s power plants idle as at Sunday.
Specifically, four plants were shut down in addition to the nine that were shut.
There are 27 power plants on Nigeria’s national grid currently with 13 of them not generating anything for now, an electricity system operator revealed.
Power pants shut down as at Friday were nine, and by Saturday, Geregu II, Sapele II, Alaoji, shut on Saturda, while Afam IV and V, have been shut on Sunday.
It’s also recalled that all the power plants built under the National Integrated Power Project were idle.
Other idle plants before now are Olorunsogo II, Omotosho, Odukpani, Ihovbor, Gbarain, Ibom Power, AES, ASCO and Trans-Amadi IPP.
Sources said, the shut down was due to gas constraint, low load demand by the distribution companies, maintenance, frequency response and rupturing of gas pipeline.
Total power generation in the country fell to 3,242.4mw as of 6am on Sunday from 3,296.5MW on Saturday and 3,549.6MW on Friday.
A total of 4,036.5MW of generation capacity was unused as 15 plants suffered gas constraints (2,618MW) while 13 plants could not generate 1,418.5MW due to low load demand by the Discos, according to the system operator.
Egbin, the nation’s biggest power plant, located in Lagos, only generated 390MW as of 6am on Sunday, compared to its installed capacity of over 1,000MW.
According to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, the Discos failed to distribute 8,733.39MW in the week ended August 30
The TCN’s data on national grid performance from August 24 to 30 which was released on Saturday showed that the electricity distributed by the Discos during the week averaged 3,419.78MW.
The amount of electricity left unused by the power firms stood at 1,281.89MW on August 24 but fell to 1,067MW on August 25.
The Discos did not distribute 1,084.95MW on August 26, and 1,005.55MW on August 27.
The amount of unused electricity stood at 1,208.31MW on August 28 but rose to 1,457.21MW on August 29 and 1,628.48MW on August 30.
The system operator put the national peak demand forecast at 28,290MW; installed generation capacity at 12,910.40MW; available capacity at 7,652.60MW; transmission wheeling capacity at 8,100MW; and peak generation at 5,420.30MW.
