TCN: Nigeria Needs 15,611MW More To Meet Demands

The national peak demand forecast of 19,798 megawatts (MW) by the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) is 15,611MW below actual supply, The Nation has learnt.

Electricity customers, on January 13, 2022, got 4,187MW of electricity, showing a wide gap between the power supply level and the national peak demand forecast.

The NESI has a grid generation installed capacity of 13,014.14MW and 7,652MW generation capacity.

It also has 8,100MW transmission wheeling capacity.

The all-time peak generation NESI ever attained was 5,801.6MW.

These are contained in a document, titled: “Operational Report of January 14, 2022,” that our correspondent obtained at the weekend in Abuja.

The document, which originated from the Nigerian Electricity System Operator of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), showed that on January 13, 2022, 102097.22MWH was generated and 100493.67MWH distributed.

The TCN General Manager for Public Affairs, Mrs. Ndidi Mba, explained why there was still a huge gap between energy demand and energy supply.

She said it was too early in the year to incur the Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) wrath with a response to the question.

Her response might be an implicit blame of the deficit on the 11 DisCos across the country.

Following our correspondent’s pleas for the TCN spokesperson to comment on the development, she only referred The Nation to the company’s website that has not been updated this year.

She said: “It is too early in the year to start a fight with the DisCos. I cannot comment on your question. You can find the answer on our website, Twitter and Instagram handles.”

The last report on the website was the “daily DisCos Load Summary from June 7 to 13, 2021”.

According to the report of June 7, the reason for the situation is mainly that most of the DisCos had been rejecting the loads that were allocated to them from the TCN.

There could be other generation challenges, but even the highest energy generated in the NESI was not fully distributed to consumers.

Also, from the System Operator’s website, it is obvious from the operational report of January 14, 2022 that energy generated at 06:00hours of January 14, 2022 was 4,316MW, which is still a far cry from the country’s demanded energy of 19,798MW.

A similar report of January 13, 2022 had said there was a peak generation of 4,662MW on January 12, 2022 and that at 06:00 hours on January 13, 2022, the NESI recorded 4,168.8MW generation.

This is still not in any way near the country’s demand.