Spinning reserve in Nigeria’s electricity market has dropped to dips to 9.8 megawatts.
This was revealed by some stakeholders of the Electricity Distribution Companies, DisCos, on Monday, May 30.
Spinning Reserve is the difference between the total generated energy and what electricity system operator sends out to the DisCos.
An industry stakeholder speaking on the situation said: But the “reserve which is supposed to be a sort of storage that the market should have a recourse to when the grid breaks down or there is any emergency is fast depleting to nothing.”
He added that the spinning reserve serves to keep the grid stable.
The reduction, according to a source from one of the power generation companies (genCos), was due to attacks on the nation’s gas pipelines.
The Nigeria Electricity System Operator noted on its website that on Sunday, the energy that was sent out to the DisCos was 1,978Mw and that its lowest generation was 175.60Mw, adding that the market hit a peak generation of 2,910Mw.
The Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry, NESI, said on its website that “on May 29, average energy sent out was 1978Mwh/hour (down by 482Mwh/h). The reported gas constraint was 3,481Mw. The reported line constraint was 97Mw. The water management constraint was 380Mw. The power sector lost the estimated equivalent of N1, 900, 000, 000 on May 29 due to constraints.”