Power generation rose to 4350MW as hiccups continue in supply

• by NEWS AGENCIES
• 0 Comments

The country’s power generation rose to a peak of 4, 351.70 Mega Watts, MW on Friday, even as power supply remains abysmally epileptic.

Meanwhile, the Association of Power Generating Companies, APGC, has called for the urgent review policies critical to the effective functioning of the power sector.

Recall that the sector had couple of weeks ago experienced a drop in generation, which was blamed on damage to gas pipelines and cables by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

A system performance record posted on the web site of the System Operator (SO) shows a peak generation of 4, 351.70MW while lowest generation stood at 3, 726.60MW, giving an average of 4, 039.15MW. This is a slight improvement upon a previous release which showed a peak generation of 4, 279.3MW and a lowest of 3, 518MW, giving an average of about 3, 898MW.

However, it is over 400MW short of the baseline minimum daily generation of 4, 500MW set by the Fashola-led Ministry of Power at the end of last year for 2018. According to the Saturday post, while the highest frequency was put at 50.47Hz, the lowest frequency was 49.81Hz as total energy sent out stood at 95, 552.41MWH.

The record further shows that peak demand forecast for the day (connected + suppressed) was 20, 550MW while generation capability equals 8004.3MW.

It also shows that peak generation to date is 5222.3MW while Maximum Available Capacity to date is 7, 652.6MW as Maximum Energy Generated to date equals 109, 372.01MWH.

Meanwhile, the Generation Companies of Nigeria, GENCOs, had argued that its members have the capacity to stimulate and sustain development in the power sector of the nation’s economy.

In an email response to Vanguard enquiries, Executive Secretary, Association of Power Generating Companies, APGC, Dr. Joy Ogaji, called for the urgent review and tackling of policies as well as critical problems in the sector. She stated that: “We need to urgently review all the prevailing policies, orders and documents, conduct a viable and independent stress test on the generation, distribution and transmission capacities to enable us plan proactively and build the sector.

“Proffer a pragmatic solution to provide local/ foreign guarantees (WB/AFDB) and to deal with systemic or market risks such as regulatory risks, gas supply risks, revenue risks, etc; Guaranteed payment plan for generation companies to enable them improve generation and implement expansion plans.”

Ogaji also argued that the DISCOs low collection efficiency and a corresponding lack of significant investment in metering customers was a threat to effective collection efficiencies, calling for structures to be put in place to eliminate the high distribution and non-distribution losses across the distribution and transmission value chain. She stated that: “Government should ensure that the monitoring and enforcement agencies in the sector procure and improve data quality to enable efficiency and better future planning and projection.