Power generation crumbles to 0MW for several hours

Nigeria’s power generation collapsed completely on Thursday at exactly 12.58pm to zero megawatt and this persisted for about three hours. 

Data from the country’s System Operator showed that around 1pm on Thursday, no power generation company in Nigeria produced a single megawatt of electricity.

Industry operators told our correspondent that as a result of the complete collapse, no electricity distribution company received load allocation beginning from when the collapse was recorded up till around 3pm.

The SO stated that the 11 distribution companies got zero electricity load allocation during the period of the collapse, meaning that for about three hours on Thursday no part of Nigeria got power supply from the national grid.

Our correspondent, however, gathered that supply of electricity was restored around 3pm.

For instance, out of the 450MW that was due Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, the Disco only got about 50MW when the situation began to improve.

Before the collapse, AEDC got an allocation of 257.97MW and the nationwide generation level stood at 2,243.2MW. Sources in the sector blamed the complete collapse in power generation on the extent of destruction of infrastructure and gas pipelines vandalism that had happened in the industry over the past years, as well as the poor upgrade of power installations across the country.

“The power crisis being experienced nationwide since Tuesday this week has worsened on Thursday with a total system collapse at exactly 12.58pm this afternoon. At that point, the nation went to ground zero, with all the Discos receiving zero MW allocation from the System Operator,” an operator in the sector told our correspondent in confidence.

Officials from the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing as well as private investors, had attributed the never-ending fall in electricity generation to vandalism of gas pipelines and destruction of vital infrastructure in the industry by miscreants.

“Aside pipelines vandalism, some miscreants have been involved in the destruction of vital power infrastructure and this has been affecting not just generation but transmission and distribution as well,” a senior official at the power ministry who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak on the matter, had said.

The official also stressed that the ongoing difficulty in the downstream oil industry was also impacting negatively on the power sector.