Nigerians have continued to react to the retrogressive business ideology of Nigeria electricity Distribution Companies (Discos), who are now in the habit of reducing their demand for power from generating companies (Gencos), thereby frustrating generating capacities and killing the manufacturing sector by shortages in supplies.
Many manufacturers who spoke to Business Hilights weekend, decried the rising epileptic supplies which they said, has impaired their production outputs.
Also, several households across Lagos and Abuja, said power supplies had been on serious decline since the second quarter of this year.
However, a clear answer to the observed drop in supplies emerged late last week when it was revealed from data secured from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), that 10 out of the nation’s 27 power plants saw their total output reduced by 1,664 megawatts on Thursday as a result of low demand by power distribution companies, data obtained from the TCN showed.
Otherwise, within the period under review, available power generation in the country stood at 3,627.3MW as of 6.00am on Thursday, while 2,029MW could not be generated due to low load demand by Discos and line constraints.
Industrialists had been decrying low shedding by Discos, saying productivity had been under frustration for too long since Discos devised the idea of low demand upon skyrocketing bills.
NESO, an arm of the TCN, put the nation’s installed generation capacity at 12,910.40MW; available capacity at 7,652.60MW; transmission wheeling capacity at 8,100MW; and the peak generation ever attained at 5,375MW which was not this year.
Just as the nation’s power grid recorded its eighth total collapse this year on June 30, plunging consumers across the country into a blackout for some hours, TCN corroborated the NESO report, saying the national grid experienced a system collapse due to high voltage following a massive drop of load by the Discos. The government-managed claimed that “the high voltage also caused a fire incident in the 75MX reactor in the Benin Substation, Sapele Road in Benin City, Edo State.”
