According to the Federal Government, Nigeria’s electricity transmission capacity has expanded to 8,500 megawatts. It made the announcement through the Transmission Company of Nigeria, a Federal Government-owned company, emphasizing that TCN was now capable of evacuating every quantum of electricity produced by power production businesses.
Ajiboye Oluwagbenga, General Manager, Transmission Service Provider, TCN, stated on the sidelines of the recently concluded Bi-annual Joint Operations, Generation, and Distribution Companies planning meeting in Abuja that the government was not relenting in increasing Nigeria’s power transmission capacity.
Senior executives from several electricity producing, transmission, and distribution organizations attended the conference, which was sponsored by the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company.
The sector’s power generating and distribution arms were privatized in November 2013 and controlled by private investors, but the government retained complete control of the industry’s transmission portion.
Oluwagbenga refuted Gencos’ claims that TCN lacked enough capacity to evacuate the amount of power generated by power production firms.
He said, “If you are talking about distribution constraints, that is there. But with generation, presently, available capacity can be conveniently wheeled. We don’t have constraints. In the few places we envisaged constraints, we are already working, preparing for evacuation.”
When asked to state the current capacity of the transmission company, he said the firm just did a simulation that showed that its capacity to transmit power had risen to 8,500MW.
Oluwagbenga said, “Let me tell you one funny thing about this sector now, if you people attended the meeting we had with Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission recently, we demonstrated by simulation that TCN can conveniently wheel 8,500MW.
“But up till now, the power generation that is coming to the grid is always revolving around 4,000MW; why? We can blame the Discos (distribution companies) partially because we believe the off-take is not there due to revenue issues.
“But at the same time, I want to ask a germane question, when we were talking about service level agreement, why is the generation arm shying away from signing an agreement of 5,000MW?
“If they have enough capacity, why can’t they come together and sign the agreement as Discos and TCN have done. Let them sign their own part of the agreement with us that they will be able to generate 5,000MW and see whether TCN will not be able to evacuate it.”
