That the nation’s power generation has fallen below the 3,000 megawatts mark is no more news, rather the number of idle power plants has risen to eight at the last count. However, effort to get the views of the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola failed at press time.
Otherwise, idle generations rose from five on Friday to eight on Sunday.
Nigeria’s power grid lost a total of 743.4MW over the weekend as generation dropped from 3,306.6MW on Friday to 2,632.4MW and 2,563.2MW on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
As at 6am on Monday, the total generation stood at 2,886.7MW, with seven power plants, including Sapele II and Alaoji II not generating any megawatt.
Also idle include plants Afam IV & V, Gbarain II, AES, ASCO and Rivers IPP on Monday, according to the latest data from the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing.
Besides, why some parts of Lagos suffered outages since this week cannot be unconnected to massive drop in electricity generation from the nation’s biggest power station, Egbin, located in Lagos as it gone down to 272MW as of 6am on Monday from 381MW and 312MW and on Friday and Sunday, respectively.
The power grid, which has suffered 13 total collapses this year, experienced a partial collapse last Wednesday, the third of such this year.
At Afam IV & V, units GT1 to 12 have been de-commissioned and scrapped; GT13 to 16 are out on blade failure; GT17 and 18 out due to burnt generator transformer; and GT19 and 20 are awaiting major overhaul.
The report added Sapele II’s GT1 unit was said to be out on undisclosed fault; GT2 tripped on low gas pressure; GT3 out on bearing lift pump trouble; and GT4 tripped on loss of auxiliary.
Units GT1, 2 and 4 of Alaoji were said to be out due to gas constraints, while GT3 was shut down due to generator air inlet filter trouble.
Gbarain II’s GT2 was said to be out for frequency management, while AES has been out of production since September 27, 2014.
Unit GT1 of ASCO has been shut down due to leakage in the furnace, while the Rivers Independent Power Plants has been out of production since September 16, 2016.
It was not clear if shortage of gas and vandalism contributed to the general drop.
