Nationwide Darkness Imminent As NCC Directs Generation Companies To Shut Down

 

Nigerians may be plunged into a state of darkness as the National Control Center, NCC Oshogbo responsible for all Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN grid operations monitoring and control within the transmission network instructed power generation companies to shut down from 12 midnight till now.

 

This is according to a report by LEADERSHIP Newspaper.

 

The report revealed that the directive given on Monday became necessary following load rejection by Distribution Companies, DisCos. Presently many parts of Lagos suffered outage since yesterday.

 

Sources within the DisCos blamed the outage to declining capacity from GenCos due to gas supply constraints.

 

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

 

LEADERSHIP 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.