Blackout In Nigeria As Power Supply Drops To 2,665MW Nationwide

Inadequate supply of gas to the power station and explosions at transmission lines in the Lagos area and Jebba have resulted in a drop in electricity generation to 2,665MW, THISDAY has learnt.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has directed the 11 distribution companies (Discos) nationwide “not to pick loads to avoid a system collapse”.

Data obtained from a source at TCN on the “Daily Load Analysis and Day Ahead Consumption” for yesterday showed that between 1 am and 6 am on Saturday, generation fell to 2,500MW.

However, between 6 am and 11.59 pm, the hourly dispatch to the Discos rose to 2,721.20MW, thus averaging 2,665.90MW for the whole day.

The chief executive of one of the Discos, who did not want to be named, told THISDAY yesterday that with the abysmally low level of generation, TCN directed the Discos not to pick loads to forestall a system collapse.

“When generation is very low like this, TCN tries to stabilise it and the only way to stabilise it is to balance the load. Right now, we can’t pick any load, otherwise there will be a system collapse,” he said.

TCN had at the beginning of this month announced for the first time that the country generated about 5,074.7MW of electricity.

The attainment of the new record peak generation as well as the highest maximum daily energy of 109,372 megawatts hour (MWH) was recorded on February 2, 2016.

Before this, the previous peak generation was put at 4,883.9MW attained on November 23, 2015, and the previous highest maximum daily energy wheeled out nationwide was 107,142.32MWH recorded on January 26, 2016.

It was however gathered that supply, which later averaged above 4,600MW, has deteriorated in recent weeks due to transmission and gas supply issues.