- DisCos state reason for power shortfall
Electricity Generation Companies (GenCos), comprising gas-fired and hydro stations, said they released an average of 3,406 megawatts/hour of electricity into the national grid on Friday.
This was disclosed in a daily energy report by the Advisory Power Team, office of the Vice President.
The report said that the electricity sent out by the GenCos went up by 126.32 megawatts from the figure released on Friday.
It, however, said that 2,073 megawatts could not be generated due to non availability of gas.
The report noted that zer0 megawatts was not generated due to non availability of transmission infrastructure during the period.
Similarly, it said that 2,480.4 megawatts were not generated due to high frequency resulting from non availability of distribution infrastructure.
According to the report, zero (0) megawatts was recorded as losses due to water management procedures.
The report revealed that the power sector lost an estimated of N2.2billion on Friday due to insufficient gas supply, distribution and transmission infrastructure.
On sector reform/activities, it said that the dominant constraint for Friday was high frequency resulting from non availability of distribution infrastructure.
The report noted that the peak generation attained on Friday was 4,288.7 megawatts.
Meanwhile, the Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) at the weekend blamed the woes in the power sector on N1.6 trillion shortfall.
The Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributiors (ANED), Mr Sunday Oduntan, said it would be wrong to accuse a segment of the value chain of causing the challenges in the sector.
According to him, the shortfall accumulated over a period of time.
The entire sector is battling a shortfall of N1.6 trillion, which represents the revenues that are supposed to have come to the operators in the value chain namely the power generation companies (GenCos), energy distribution firms and others.
“Of the three key stakeholders in the sector, DisCos operate as the collectors of the funds or money in the sector. I disagree with figures that are not true, but are being bandied about in the sector because they are not true,” he said.
The Federal Government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Siemens, a German firm, to produce 25, 000 megawatts (Mw) for the country, over a period.
This is being done that the issue would put an end to power outage in the country.
Currently, the sector is experiencing low productivity, occasioned by problems such as funding, shortage of gas, deficiencies of equipment used in transmitting electricity to the energy distributors and accumulated bills.