According to Kunle Olubiyo, president of the Nigeria Consumer Protection Network, the national power grid will fail if electricity production reaches 6,000 megawatts.
The most power Nigeria has ever produced on its national system was 5,802MW, which was evacuated on March 1 at a frequency of 50.09 hertz.
This amount of electricity was delivered to power distributors, according to the Transmission Corporation of Nigeria, which also noted that it was 186.20 MW more than the previous peak.
At 9:30 pm on March 1, 2021, TCN successfully transmitted an improved peak generation of 5,801.6MW. The frequency at which the peak generation was transmitted was 50.09Hz. This figure is 186.20MW greater than the 5,615.4MW measured on February 28, 2021. Since then, despite an increase in demand for electricity from Nigeria’s more than 200 million residents, power generation on the grid has fluctuated between 4,000MW and 5,000MW.
For instance, data acquired by our correspondent from the Federal Ministry of Electricity in Abuja on Friday revealed that 4,962.7MW of energy had been produced on the national grid as of six o’clock in the morning.
However, the NCPN president stated that the national grid would crash if it received up to 6,000MW of electricity from power-producing businesses, despite calls for an increase in power generation.
He explained that the national grid’s ability to carry more electricity was being reduced by regulatory discrepancies as well as the sector’s shoddy infrastructure.
Throughout the years, Nigeria has not been able to produce more power than 5,800MW due to regulatory inconsistencies and inadequacy. The system will collapse if we decide to use 6,000 MW at any time, according to Olubiyo.
Nigeria’s electrical grid went down roughly seven times last year, according to various sector bulletins. On September 25, 2022, the system’s power generation fell from over 3,700 MW to as little as 38 MW, causing it to collapse.
In March and April of last year, the country’s electrical system failed twice.
Due to a variety of issues, including gas shortages, difficult water management, and gas pipeline vandalism, among others, power generation on the system had continued to fluctuate.
Olubiyo gave the incoming administration the job of addressing these issues by giving the power sector priority, highlighting that this was one of the main requests of Nigerians and numerous economic entities.
He views gas-to-power as the foundation of the economy and believes it to be extremely important.
The electricity expert added that Nigeria’s 5,000MW, which is shared by more than 200 million people, was woefully insufficient in comparison to what is considered acceptable on a worldwide scale.
